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THE NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 



THE NORMANS IN 
EUROPEAN HISTORY 



BY 



CHARLES HOMER HASKINS 

GURNEY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE 
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

®bc fhitexfiiHt pre?? Cambtidge 

1915 



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COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY CHARLES HOMER HASKINS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published October iqij 



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©CI,A4141.5 9 



TO MY WIFE 



PREFACE 

THE eight lectures which are here published 
were delivered before the Lowell Institute in 
February, 191 5, and at the University of Cali- 
fornia the following July, and it has seemed best to 
print them in the form in which they were prepared for 
a general audience. Their purpose is not so much to 
furnish an outline of the annals of Norman history as 
to place the Normans in relation to their time and to 
indicate the larger features of their work as founders 
and organizers of states and contributors to European 
culture. Biographical and narrative detail has accord- 
ingly been subordinated in the effort to give a general 
view of Norman achievement in France, in England, 
and in Italy. Various aspects of Norman history have 
been treated with considerable fullness by historians, 
but, so far as I am aware, no connected account of the 
whole subject has yet been attempted from this point of 
view. This fact, it is hoped, may justify the publication 
of these lectures, as well as explain the omission of many 
topics which would naturally be treated in an extended 
narrative. 

This book rests partly upon the writings of the various 
scholars enumerated in the bibliographical note at the 



vlil PREFACE 

end of each chapter, partly upon prolonged personal 
investigations, the results of which have appeared in 
various special periodicals and will, in part, soon be 
collected into a volume of Studies in Norman Institu- 
tions. When it seemed appropriate in the text, I have 
felt at liberty to draw freely upon the more general por- 
tions of these articles, leaving more special and critical 
problems for discussion elsewhere. 

I wish to thank the authorities of the Lowell Institute 
and the University of California, and to acknowledge 
helpful criticism from my colleague Professor William S. 
Ferguson and from Mr. George W. Robinson, Secretary 
of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Harvard 
University. My indebtedness to Norman scholars and 
Norman scholarship is deeper and more personal than 
any list of their names and writings can indicate. 

Charles H. Haskins. 
Cambridge, Mass. 

August, 1915. 



CONTENTS 

-^1. NORMANDY AND ITS PLACE IN HISTORY i 

_ II, THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 26 

"HI. NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 52 

IV. THE NORMAN EMPIRE 85 

V. NORMANDY AND FRANCE 116 

^ VI. NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 148 

VII. THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 192 

VIII. THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 218 

INDEX 251 



THE NORMANS IN 
EUROPEAN HISTORY 

I 

NORMANDY AND ITS PLACE IN HISTORY 

IN June, 1911, at Rouen, Normandy celebrated the 
one-thousandth anniversary of its existence. Dec- 
orated with the grace and simplicity of which only 
a French city is capable, the Norman capital received 
with equal cordiality the descendants of the conquerors 
and the conquered — Norwegians and Swedes, Danes 
of Denmark and Danes of Iceland, Normans of Nor- 
mandy and of England, of Sicily and of Canada. Four 
Norwegian students accomplished the journey from 
their native fjords in an open Viking boat, having set 
ashore early in the voyage a comrade who had so far 
fallen away from the customs of his ancestors as to 
sleep under a blanket. From the United States bold 
Scandinavians, aided by the American Express Com- 
pany, brought from Minnesota the Kensington rune 
stone, which purports to prove the presence of Norse ex- 
plorers in the northwest one hundred and thirty years 
before the landfall of Columbus. A congress of Norman 
history listened for nearly a week in five simultaneous 
sections to communications on every phase of the Nor- 



2 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

man past. There was Norman music in the streets, 
there were Norman plays at the theatres, Norman 
mysteries in the cathedral close. Banquet followed ban- 
quet and toast followed toast, till the cider of Normandy 
paled before the champagne of France. Finally a great 
pageant, starting, like the city, from the river-bank, un- 
rolled the vast panorama of Norman history through 
streets whose very names reecho its great figures — 
Rollo and his Norse companions arriving in their Viking 
ships, the dukes his successors, William Longsword, 
Richard the Fearless, Robert the Magnificent, William 
the Conqueror, the sons of Tancred of Hauteville who 
drove the paynim from Sicily, and that other Tancred 
who planted the banner of the cross on the walls of 
Jerusalem, all with their knights and heralds and men 
at arms, followed by another pageant of the achieve- 
ments of Normandy in the arts of peace. And on the 
last evening the great abbey-church of Saint-Ouen 
burnt red fire for the first time in its history till the 
whole mass glowed and every statue and storied niche 
stood out with some clear, sharp bit of the Norman past, 
while its lantern-tower, "the crown of Normandy," 
shone out over the city and the river which are the 
centre of Norman history and where this day the dukes 
wore again their crown. 

In this transitory world the thousandth anniversary 
of anything is sufiliciently rare to challenge attention, 
even in an age which is rapidly becoming hardened to 



NORMANDY IN HISTORY 3 

celebrations. Of the events commemorated In 1915 the 
discovery of the Pacific is only four hundred years old, 
the signing of the Great Charter but seven hundred. 
The oldest American university has celebrated only its 
two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, the oldest Euro- 
pean only its eight-hundredth. Even those infrequent 
commemorations which carry us back a thousand years 
or more, like the millenary of King Alfred or the sixteen- 
hundredth Constantinian jubilee of 1913, are usually re- 
minders of great men or great events rather than, as in 
the case of Normandy, the completion of a millennium 
of continuous historical development. So far as I can 
now recollect, the only parallel is that of Iceland, which 
rounded out its thousand years with the dignity of a 
new constitution in 1874. Of about the same age, Ice- 
land also resembles Normandy in being the creation of 
the Norse sea-rovers, an outpost of the Vikings in the 
west, as Normandy was an outpost in the south. Of 
the two, Iceland is perhaps the more individual, as it 
certainly has been the more faithful to its Scandinavian 
traditions, but the conditions which have enabled it to 
retain its early characteristics have also isolated it from 
the broader currents of the world's history. Normandy, 
on the other hand, was drawn at once into the full tide 
of European politics and became itself a founder of new 
states, an imperial power, a colonizer of lands beyond 
the seas, the mother of a greater Normandy in England, 
in Sicily, and in America. 



4 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

At home and abroad the history of Normandy is a 
record of rich and varied achievement — of war and 
conquest and feats of arms, but also of law and govern- 
ment and religion, of agriculture, industry, trade, and 
exploration, of literature and science and art. It takes 
us back to Rollo and William of the Long Sword, to the 
Vikings and the Crusaders, to the conquerors of England 
and Sicily, to masterful prelates of the feudal age like 
Odo of Bayeux and Thomas Becket; it brings us down 
to the admirals and men of art and letters of the Grand 
Steele, — Tourville and DuQuesne, Poussin, Malherbe, 
and the great Corneille, — to Charlotte Corday and the 
days of the Terror, and to the painters and scholars and 
men of letters of the nineteenth century, — G^ricault 
and Millet, Laplace and Leopold Delisle, Flaubert and 
Maupassant and Albert Sorel. It traces the laborious 
clearing of ancient forests, the rude processes of prim- 
itive agriculture, the making of Norman cider and the 
breeding of the Norman horse, the vicissitudes of trade 
in fish and marten-skins, in pottery, cheap cottons, and 
strong waters, the development of a centre of fashion 
like Trouville or centres of war and commerce like Cher- 
bourg and Havre. It describes the slow building of 
monasteries and cathedrals and the patient labors of 
priests and monks, as well as the conquest of the Cana- 
ries, the colonization of Canada, and the exploration of 
the Great West. A thousand years of such history are 
well worth a week of commemoration and retrospect. 



NORMANDY IN HISTORY 5 

To the American traveller who wends his way toward 
Paris from Cherbourg, Havre, or Dieppe, the first im- 
pression of Normandy is that of a country strikingly 
like England. There are the same high chalk cliffs, the 
same " little grey church on the windy shore," often the 
same orchards and hedges, poppies and roses. There are 
trees and wide stretches of forest as in few other parts of 
France, placid, full-brimmed rivers and quiet country- 
sides, and everywhere the rich green of meadow and 
park and pasture, that vivid green of the north which 
made Alphonse Daudet at Oxford shudder, "Green 
rheumatism," as he thought of the sun-browned plains 
and sharp, bare hills of his own Provence. Normandy 
is brighter than England, with a dash more of color in 
the landscape, but its skies are not sunny and its air 
breathes the mists of the sea and the chill of the north. 
There is a grey tone also, of grey towns and grey sea, 
matched by an austere and sombre element in the Nor- 
man character, which, if it does not take its pleasures 
sadly after the manner of Taine's Englishmen, is prone 
to take them soberly, and by an element of melancholy, 
a sense of le glas des choses mortes, which Flaubert called 
the melancholy of the northern barbarians. The Nor- 
man landscape also gives us the feeling of finish and re- 
pose and the sentiment of a rich past, not merely in the 
obvious externals of crumbling wall and ivied tower, 
but in that deeper sense of a people bound from im- 
memorial antiquity to the soil, adapted to every local 



6 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

difference through long generations of use and wont, in 
an intimate union of man and nature which makes the 
Norman inseparable from his land. All this, too, is 
English, but English with a difference. Just as, in 
Henry James's phrase, the English landscape is a 
landlord's landscape, and the French a peasant's, so 
the mairie and the prefecture, the public garden and 
the public band, the cafe and the ever-open church, the 
workman's blouse and the grandam's bonnet, remind us 
continually that we are in a Latin country and on our 
way to Paris. 

Now the history of Normandy reflects this twofold 
impression of the traveller: it faces toward England and 
the sea, but it belongs to France and the land. Open to 
the outer world by the great valley of the Seine and the 
bays and inlets of its long coast-line, Normandy was 
never drawn to the sea in the same degree as its neigh- 
bor Brittany, nor isolated in any such measure from the 
life of the Continent. Where the shore is low, meadow 
and field run to the water's edge; where it is high, its 
line is relatively little broken, so that the streams gener- 
ally rush to the sea down short, steep valleys, up which 
wheeze the trains which connect the little seaside ports 
and watering-places with the modern world within. In 
spite of the trade of its rivers and its ports, in spite of 
the growth of industry along its streams, Normandy is 
still primarily an agricultural country, rooted deep in 
the rich soil of an ancient past, a country of horses and 



NORMANDY IN HISTORY 7 

cattle, of butter and cheese and cider and the kindly 
fruits of the earth ; and the continuity of its history rests 
upon the land itself. "B^ind the shore and even upon 
it," says Vidal de la Blache, "the ancient cumulative 
force of the interior has reacted against the sea. There 
an old and rich civilization has subsisted in its entirety, 
founded on the soil, through whose power have resisted 
and endured the speech, the traditions, and the peoples 
of ancient times." ^ Conquered and colonized by the sea- 
rovers of the north, the land of Normandy was able to 
absorb its conquerors into the law, the language, the re- 
ligion, and the culture of France, where, as Sorel says, 
their descendants now preserve "their attachment to 
their native soil, the love of their ancestors, the respect 
for the ruins of the past, and the indestructible venera- 
tion for its tombs." 2 

If the character of Normandy is thus in considerable 
measure determined by geography, its boundaries and 
even its internal unity are chiefly the result of history. 
For good and ill, Normandy has, on the land side, no 
natural frontiers. The hills of the west continue those 
of Brittany, the plains of the east merge in those of 
Picardy. The watershed of the south marks no clear-cut 
boundary from Maine and Perche; the valleys of the 
Seine and the Eure lead straight to the Ile-de-France, 
separated from Normandy only by those border for- 
tresses of theAvre and the Vexin which are the perpetual 

* La France, p. i6i. ^ Pag^s normandes, dedication. 



8 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

battle-ground of Norman history — Normandy's Al- 
sace-Lorraine ! Within these limits lie two distinct 
physiographic areas, one the lower portion of the Paris 
basin, the other a western region which belongs with 
Brittany and the west of France. These districts are 
commonly distinguished as Upper and Lower Normandy, 
terms consecrated by long use and representing two 
contrasted regions and types, but there is no general 
agreement as to their exact limits or the limits of the 
region of Middle Normandy which some have placed 
between them. Even the attempt to define these areas 
in terms of cheese — as the land respectively of the 
creamy Neufch^tel, the resilient Pont-l'Eveque, and 
the flowing Camembert — is defective from the point 
of view of geographical accuracy ! 

The most distinctive parts of Upper Normandy are 
the valley of the Seine and the region to the north and 
east, the pays de Caux, fringed by the coast from Havre 
to the frontier of Picardy. Less monotonous than the 
bare plains farther east, the plateau of Caux is covered 
by a rich vegetation, broken by scattered farmsteads, 
where house and orchard and outbuildings are pro- 
tected from the wind by those rectangular earthworks 
surmounted by trees which are the most characteristic 
feature of the region. It is the country of Madame Bo- 
vary and of Maupassant's peasants. Equally typical 
is the valley of the Seine, ample, majestic, slow, cutting 
its sinuous way through high banks which grow higher 



NORMANDY IN HISTORY 9 

as we approach the sea, winding around ancient strong- 
holds Hke Chateau Gaillard and Tancarville or ruined 
abbeys like Jumieges and Saint-Wandrille, — where 
Maeterlinck's bees still hum in the garden, — catching 
the tide soon after it enters Normandy, reaching deep 
water at Rouen, and meeting the "longed-for dash of 
waves " in the great estuary at its mouth. Halfway from 
the Norman frontier to the river's end stands Rouen, 
mistress of the Seine and capital, not only of Upper Nor- 
mandy, but of the whole Norman land. Celtic in name 
and origin, like most French cities, chief town of the 
Roman province of Lugdunensis Secunda and of the 
ecclesiastical province to which this gave rise, the politi- 
cal and commercial importance of Rouen have made it 
also the principal city of mediaeval and modern Nor- 
mandy and the seat of the changing political authority 
to which the land has bowed. As early as the twelfth 
century it is one of the famous cities of Europe, likened 
to Rome by local poets and celebrated even by sober 
historians for its murmuring streams and pleasant 
meadows, its hill-girt site and strong defences, its beau- 
tiful churches and private dwellings, its well-stocked 
markets, and its extensive foreign trade. In spite of all 
modern changes, Rouen is still a city full of history, in 
the parchments of its archives and the stones of its walls, 
in its stately cathedral with the ancient tombs of the 
Norman dukes, in the glorious nave of its great abbey- 
church, the florid Gothic of Saint-Maclou, the richly 



10 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

carved perpendicular of its Palace of Justice, and its 
splendid facades of the French Renaissance; historic 
also in those unbuilt spots which mark the landing of 
the Northmen and the burning of Joan of Arc. 

Lower Normandy shows greater variety, comprising 
the hilly country of the Bocage, — the so-called Nor- 
man Switzerland, — the plain of Caen and the pasture- 
lands of the Bessin, and the wide sweep of the Atlantic 
coast-line, from the promontory of La Hague to the 
shifting sands of the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel. It is 
a country of green fields and orchards and sunken lanes, 
of dank parks and mouldering chateaux, of deserted 
mills and ancient parish churches, of quaint timbered 
houses and long village streets, of silent streams, small 
ports, and pebbly beaches, the whole merging ultimately 
in the neighboring lands of Brittany and Maine. Its 
typical places are Falaise, Vire, and Argentan, with their 
ancient castles of the Norman dukes ; Bayeux and Cou- 
tances, the foundations of whose soaring cathedrals 
carry us back to the princely prelates of the Conquest; 
provincial capitals of the Old Regime, like Valognes, or 
the new, like Saint-L6; and best of all, the crowning 
glories of the marvel of Mont-Saint-Michel. Its chief 
town is Caen, stern and grey, the heart of Normandy 
as Rouen is its head, an old poet tells us; no ancient 
Roman capital, but the creation of the mediaeval dukes, 
who reared its great abbey-churches to commemorate 
the marriage and the piety of William the Conqueror 



NORMANDY IN HISTORY ii 

and Matilda, and who established their exchequer in 
its castle ; an intellectual centre also, the seat of the only 
Norman university, of an academy, and of a society of 
antiquaries which has recovered for us great portions 
of the Norman past. 

Fashioned and enriched by the hand of man, the land 
of Normandy has in turn profoundly influenced the 
character of its inhabitants. First and foremost, the 
Norman is a peasant, industrious, tenacious, cautious, 
secretive, distrustful of strangers, close-fisted, shrewd, 
even to the point of cunning, a hard man at a bargain, 
eager for gain, but with the genius for small affairs 
rather than for great, for labor and economy rather 
than enterprise and daring. Suspicious of novelty, he is 
a conservative in politics with a high regard for vested 
interests. The possession of property, especially landed 
property, is his great ambition ; and since, as St. Francis 
long ago reminded us, property is the sower of strife and 
suits at law, he is by nature litigious and lawyerly. There 
is a well-known passage of Michelet which describes the 
Norman peasant on his return from the fields explain- 
ing the Civil Code to his attentive children ; Racine, who 
immortalized Chicaneau in his Plaideurs, laid the scene 
in a town of Lower Normandy. Even in his time this 
was no new trait, for the fondness for legal form and 
chicane can be traced in the early days of the Coutiime 
de Normandie, while the Burnt Njal Saga shows us the 
love of lawsuits and fine points of procedure full-blown 



12 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

among the Northmen of primitive Iceland. If Nor- 
mandy is the pays de gain, it is also the pays de sapience. 
Hard-headed and practical, the Norman is not an ideal- 
ist or a mystic ; even his religion has a practical flavor, 
and the Bretons are wont to assert that there has never 
been a Norman saint. With the verse of Corneille and 
the splendid monuments of Romanesque and Gothic 
architecture before us, no one can accuse the Normans 
of lack of artistic sense, yet here, too, the Norman 
imagination is inclined to be restrained and severe, real- 
istic rather than romantic. Its typical modern writers 
are Flaubert and Maupassant; its typical painter is 
Millet, choosing his scenes from Barbizon, but loyal 
to the peasant types of his native Normandy. Indeed 
Henry Adams insists that Flaubert's style, exact, im- 
personal, austere, is singularly like that of those great 
works of Norman Romanesque, the old tower of Rouen 
cathedral and St. Stephen's abbey at Caen, and shows 
us "how an old art transmutes itself into a new one, 
without changing its methods." ^ In history, a field 
in which the Norman attachment to the past has pro- 
duced notable results, the distinguishing qualities of 
Norman work have been acute criticism and great 
erudition rather than brilliant imagination. In science, 
when a great Norman like Laplace discovered the neb- 
ular hypothesis, he relegated it to a note in the ap- 
pendix to his ordered and systematic treatise on the 

* Mont- Saint- Michel and Chartres, p. 55. 



NORMANDY IN HISTORY 13 

motions of the heavenly bodies. The Norman mind is 
neither nebular nor hypothetical ! 

The land is not the whole of nature's gift to Normandy; 
we must also take account of the sea, of those who came 
by sea and those who went down to the sea in ships; 
and history tells us of another type of Norman, those 
giants of an elder day who, as one of their descendants 
has said, "found the seas too narrow and the land too 
tame." The men who subdued England and Sicily, 
who discovered the Canaries and penetrated to the 
Mississippi, who colonized Quebec and ruled the Isle 
of France, were no stay-at-homes, no cautious lands- 
men interested in boundaries and inheritances and 
vain strivings about the law. Warriors and adven- 
turers in untamed lands and upon uncharted seas, they 
were organizers of states and rulers of peoples, and it 
is their work which gives Normandy its chief claim 
upon the attention of the student of general history. 
These are the Normans of history and the Normans of 
romance. Listen to the earliest characterizations of them 
which have reached us from the south, as a monk of 
the eleventh century, Aime of Monte Cassino, sets 
out to recount the deeds of the southern Normans, 
fortissime gent who have spread themselves over the 
earth, ever leaving small things to acquire greater, 
unwilling to serve, but seeking to have every one in 
subjection ; ^ or as his contemporary, Geoffrey Malaterra, 
* Ystoire de U Normant (ed. Delarc), p. lo. 



14 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

himself very likely of Norman origin, describes this 
cunning and revengeful race, despising their own in- 
heritance in the hope of winning a greater elsewhere, 
eager for gain and eager for power, quick to imitate 
whatever they see, at once lavish and greedy; given to 
hunting and hawking and delighting in horses and ac- 
coutrements and fine clothing, yet ready when occa- 
sion demands to bear labor and hunger and cold ; skil- 
ful in flattery and the use of fine words, but unbridled 
unless held down firmly by the yoke of justice.^ Turn 
then to the northern writers of the following century : 
William of Malmesbury, who describes the fierce on- 
slaughts of the Normans, inured to war and scarcely 
able to live without it, their stratagems and breaches of 
faith and their envy of both equals and superiors ; ^ or 
the English monk Ordericus, who spent his life among 
them in Normandy and who says: — 

The race of the Normans is unconquered and ready for 
any wild deed unless restrained by a strong ruler. In what- 
ever gathering they find themselves they always seek to dom- 
inate, and in the heat of their ambition they are often led to 
violate their obligations. All this the French and Bretons 
and Flemings and other neighbors have frequently felt ; this 
the Italians and the Lombards, the Angles and Saxons, have 
also learned to their undoing.^ 

A little later it is the Norman poet Wace who tells, 
through the mouth of the dying William the Con- 

1 Historia Sicula, i, 3. * Gesta Regutn (Rolls Series), p. 306. 

' Ed. LePrevost, iii, p. 474; cf. p. 230, 



NORMANDY IN HISTORY 15 

queror, of these same Normans — brave and valiant 
and conquering, proud and boastful and fond of good 
cheer, hard to control and needing to be kept under 
foot by their rulers.^ Through all these accounts runs 
the same story of a high-spirited, masterful, unscrupu- 
lous race, eager for danger and ready for every adven- 
ture, and needing always the bit and bridle rather than 
the spur. 

The contrast is not merely between the eleventh cen- 
tury and the twentieth, between a lawless race of pio- 
neers and a race subdued and softened by generations of 
order and peace ; the two types are present in the early 
days of Norman history. Among the conquerors of 
England a recent historian distinguishes "the great 
soldiers of the invading host . . . equally remarkable 
for foresight in council and for headlong courage in the 
hour of action, whose wits are sharpened by danger and 
whose resolution is only stimulated by obstacles; in- 
capable of peaceful industry but willing to prepare 
themselves for war and rapine by the most laborious 
apprenticeship"; and over against them "the politi- 
cians . . . cautious, plausible, deliberate, with an im- 
mense capacity for detail, and an innate liking for rou- 
tine ; conscious in a manner of their moral obligations, 
but mainly concerned with small economies and gains; 
limited in their horizon, but quick to recognise superior 
powers and to use them for their own objects; indifferent 

1 Roman de Rou (ed. Andresen), ii, lines 9139-56. 



i6 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

for their own part to high ideals, and yet respectful to 
idealists; altogether a hard-headed, heavy-handed, la- 
borious and tenacious type of men." ^ 

These contrasting types of life and character it is 
tempting to refer to the respective influences of land 
and water, to the differences between the peasant and 
the rider to the sea. One might even attempt a philoso- 
phy of Norman history somewhat on this wise. In its 
normal and undisturbed state Normandy is a part of 
France, in its life as in its geography, and as such it 
shows only the ordinary local differences from the rest 
of the French lands. So it was under the Romans, so 
under the Franks. At the beginning of the tenth cen- 
tury the coming of the Northmen introduces a new 
element which develops relations with the sea and the 
countries beyond the sea, with Scandinavia and later 
with the British Isles. Normandy ceases to be provin- 
cial, it almost ceases to be French ; it even becomes the 
centre of an Atlantic empire which stretches from Scot- 
land to the Pyrenees. It sends its pilgrims to Com- 
postela, its chivalry to Jerusalem, its younger sons to 
Sicily and southern Italy. Its relations with the sea 
do not cease with its political separation from the lands 
across the Channel in 1204. The English come back for 
a time in the fifteenth century; the Normans cross the 
Atlantic in the sixteenth and settle Canada in the sev- 
enteenth. But the overmastering influence of the soil 

* H. W. C. Davis, England under the Normans and Angevins, p. 3. 



NORMANDY IN HISTORY 17 

prevails and draws its children back to itself. The sea- 
faring impulse declines; activity turns inward; the 
province is finally absorbed in the nation; Normandy 
is again a part of France, and the originality and dis- 
tinctness of its history fade away in the life of the 
whole. 

Philosophy or no philosophy, the history of Nor- 
mandy falls for our purposes into three convenient 
periods. The first of these extends from the earliest 
times to the coming of the Northmen in 911, the event 
which created Normandy as a distinct entity. The 
second is the history of the independent Norman duchy 
from 911 to the French conquest in 1204, the three 
splendid centuries of Norman independence and Nor- 
man greatness. The third period of seven hundred 
years deals with Normandy as a part of France. 

The interest and importance of these several periods 
vary with the point of view. Many people are of the 
opinion that the only history which matters is modern 
histoiy, and the more modern the better because the 
nearer to ourselves and our time. To such everything 
is meaningless before the French Revolution or the 
Franco- Prussian War — or perhaps the War of 1914. To 
those who care only for their own time the past has 
no perspective; as a distinguished maker and writer of 
history has said, James Buchanan and Tiglath-Pileser 
become contemporaries. This foreshortened interest 



i8 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

in the immediate past starts from a sound principle, 
namely, that it is an important function of history to 
explain the present in the light of the past from which 
it has come. By a natural reaction from the study 
which stopped with Marcus Aurelius or the American 
colonies or the Congress of Vienna, the demand natu- 
rally arose for the history of the day before yesterday, 
which was once declared to be the least known period 
in human annals. This is quite legitimate if it does not 
stop here and does not accept the easy assumption that 
what is nearest us is necessarily most important, even 
to ourselves. Modern Germany owes more to Martin 
Luther than to Nietzsche, more to Charles the Great, 
who eleven hundred years ago conquered and civilized 
the Saxons and began the subjugation of the Slavs, 
than to many a more modern figure in the Sieges-allee 
at Berlin. Our method of reckoning time and latitude 
by sixtieths owes less to the contemporaries of James 
Buchanan than to those of Tiglath-Pileser. If we must 
apply material standards to history, we must consider 
the mass as well as the square of the distance. 

Obviously, too, we must consider distance in space 
as well as in time. The Boston fire of 1872 did not rouse 
Paris, and our hearts do not thrill at the mention of 
the Socialist mayors and Conservative deputies whose 
names become household words when the streets of 
French towns are rechristened in their memory. The 
perspective of Norman history is different for a Norman 



NORMANDY IN HISTORY 19 

than for other Frenchmen, different for a Frenchman 
than for an American. 

Now there can be no question that for the average 
Norman the recent period bulks larger than the earlier. 
His life is directly and constantly affected by the bu- 
reaucratic traditions of the Old Regime, by the new 
freedom and the land-distribution of the Revolution, 
by the coming of the railroad, the steamship, and the 
primary school. William the Conqueror, Philip Augus- 
tus, Joan of Arc, their deeds and their times, have be- 
come mere traditions to him, if indeed they are that. 
In all these changes, however, there is nothing distinc- 
tive, nothing peculiar, nothing that cannot be studied 
just as well in some other part of France. Their local 
and specifically Norman aspects are of absorbing in- 
terest to Normandy, but they are meaningless to the 
world at large. With the union with France in 1204 
Norman history becomes local history, and whatever 
possesses more than local interest it shares with the 
rest of France. From the point of view of the world 
at large, the history of Normandy runs parallel with 
that of the other regions of France. Normandy will 
contribute its quota of great names to the world, in 
art and music and literature, in learning and indus- 
try and politics; it will take its part in the great 
movements of French history, the Reformation, the 
Revolution, the new republic; but it will be only a 
part of a larger whole and derive its interest for the 



20 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

general student from its membership in the body of 
France. 

Much the same is true of the period before the com- 
ing of the Northmen. Under the Celts, the Romans, 
and the Franks, the region which was to become Nor- 
mandy is not distinguished in any notable way from 
the rest of Gaul, and it has the further disadvantage of 
being one of the regions concerning which our knowl- 
edge is particularly scanty. A few names of tribes in 
Caesar's Gallic War and in the Roman geographers, a 
few scattered inscriptions from the days of the empire, 
a few lives of saints and now and then a rare document 
of Frankish times, this with the results of archaeological 
research constitutes the basis of early Norman histor>\ 
After all, Normandy was remote from Rome and lay 
apart also from the main currents of Frankish life and 
politics, so that we should not look here for much light 
on general conditions. Nevertheless it is in this obscure 
age that the foundations of Normandy were laid. First 
of all, the population, Gallo-Roman at bottom, receiv- 
ing a Germanic admixture of Saxons and Franks long 
before the coming of the Northmen, but still prepon- 
derantly non-Germanic in its racial type. Next, lan- 
guage, determined by the process of Romanization and 
persisting as a Romance speech in spite of Saxon and 
Frank and Northman, until in the earliest monuments 
of the eleventh century we can recognize the beginnings 
of modern French. Then law, the Frankish law which 



NORMANDY IN HISTORY 21 

the Northmen were to absorb, perpetuate, and carry 
to England. Fourth, rehgion, the Christian faith, tri- 
umphing only with difficulty in a land largely rural and 
open to barbarian invasion, but established firmly by 
the sixth century and already reenforced by monastic 
foundations which were to be the centres of faith and 
culture to a later age. Finally, the framework of politi- 
cal geography, resting on the Roman cities which with 
some modifications were perpetuated as the dioceses of 
the mediaeval church, and connected by Roman roads 
which remained until modern times the great highways 
of local communication. A beginning was also made in 
the direction of separate organization when, toward the 
close of the fourth century, these districts of the north- 
west are for the first time set off by themselves as an 
administrative area, the province of Lugdunensis Se- 
cunda, which coincides with later Normandy. Then, as 
regularly throughout Gaul, the civil province becomes 
the ecclesiastical province, centring about its oldest 
church, Rouen, and the province of the archbishop of 
Rouen perpetuates the boundaries of the political area 
after the political authority passed away, and carries 
over to the Middle Ages the outline of the Roman or- 
ganization. In all this process there is nothing particu- 
larly different from what took place throughout the 
greater part of northern Gaul, but the results were 
fundamental for Normandy and for the whole of Nor- 
man history. 



22 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

A new epoch begins with the coming of the Northmen 
in the early tenth century, as a result of which Nor- 
mandy was differentiated from the rest of France and 
carried into the broader currents of European history. 
At first an outpost of the Scandinavian north, its rela- 
tions soon shifted as it bred the conquerors of Eng- 
land and Sicily. The Normans of the eleventh century, 
Henry Adams maintains, stood more fully in the centre 
of the world's history than their English descendants 
ever did. They "were a part, and a great part, of the 
Church, of France, and of Europe." The Popes leaned 
on them, at times heavily. By the conquest of England 
the "Norman dukes cast the kings of France into the 
shade. . . . Normans were everywhere in 1066, and 
everywhere in the lead of their age." ^ A century later 
Normans ruled half of Italy, two thirds of France, and 
the whole of England ; and they had made a beginning 
on Ireland and Scotland. No one can write of Euro- 
pean affairs throughout this whole period without 
giving a large place to the Normans and their doings; 
while events like the conquests of England and Ire- 
land changed the course of history. 

Normandy has. also its place in the history of Euro- 
pean institutions, for the Normans were organizers as 
well as conquerors, and their political creations were 
the most efficient states of their time. Masterful, yet 
legally minded and businesslike, with a sense for detail 
* Moni-Saint-Michel and Chartres, p. 4. 



NORMANDY IN HISTORY 23 

and routine, the Norman princes had a sure instinct 
for state-building, at home and abroad. The Norman 
duchy was a compact and powerful state before its duke 
crossed the Channel, and the central government which 
the Normans created in England showed the same 
characteristics on a larger scale. The Anglo-Norman 
empire of the twelfth century was the marvel of its 
day, while the history of the Norman kingdom of Sic- 
ily showed that the Norman genius for assimilation and 
political organization was not confined to the dukes of 
Rouen. Highly significant during the eleventh and 
twelfth centuries, Norman institutions remained of 
permanent importance, affecting the central adminis- 
tration of France in ways which are still obscure, and 
exerting a decisive influence upon the law and govern- 
ment of England. Normandy was the connecting link 
between the Prankish law of the Continent and the 
English common law, and thus claims a share in the 
jurisprudence of the wide-flung lands to which the com- 
mon law has spread. The institution of trial by jury, for 
example, is of Norman origin, or rather of Prankish 
origin and Norman development. 

By virtue, then, of its large part in the events of its 
time, by virtue of the decisive character of the events 
in which the Normans took part, and by virtue of the 
permanent influence of its institutions, the Normandy 
of the dukes can claim an important position in the 
general history of the world. In seeking to describe the 



24 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

place of the Normans in European history we shall ac- 
cordingly pass over those periods, the earlier and the 
later, which are primarily of local interest, and concen- 
trate ourselves upon the heroic age of the tenth, elev- 
enth, and twelfth centuries. We shall begin with the 
coming of the Northmen and the creation of the Nor- 
man state. The third lecture will consider the Norman 
conquest of England; the fourth, the Norman empire to 
which this gave rise. We shall then trace the events 
which led to the separation of Normandy from England 
and its ultimate union in 1204 with the French mon- 
archy under Philip Augustus, concluding our survey of 
the Normans of the north by a sketch of Norman life 
and culture in this period. The two concluding lectures 
will trace the establishment of the Norman kingdom 
of southern Italy and Sicily, and examine the brilliant 
composite civilization of the southern Normans from the 
reign of the great King Roger to the accession of his 
still more famous grandson, the Emperor Frederick II. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

There is no substantial general history of Normandy. For a review 
of the materials, the literature, and the problems, see the excellent 
r6sum6 of H. Prentout, La Normandie (Paris, 1910, reprinted from 
the Revue de synthese historique). For bibliographical purposes this 
should be supplemented by the Catalogue des ouvrages normands de 
la Bibliotheque municipale de Caen (Caen, 1910-12). For the general 
features of Norman geography, see the brief account by Vidal de la 
Blache, in the Histoire de France of Lavisse, republished with illustra- 
tions under the title of La France (Paris, 1908). The subject can best 



NORMANDY IN HISTORY 25 

be followed out in J. Sion, Les paysans de la Normandie orientale 
(Paris, 1908), and R. de Felice, La Basse- Normandie (Paris, 1907). 
Various aspects of Norman genius and character are delightfully 
treated by Albert Sorel, Pages normandes (Paris, 1907). The pro- 
ceedings of the historical congress held in conjunction with the rnill^- 
naire of 191 1 were to have been printed in full, but so far only various 
reprints of individual communications have appeared. J. Touflet, Le 
miUenaire de Normandie (Rouen, 1913), is not an account of the com- 
memoration, but an illustrated collection of popular papers. One of 
the more notable pamphlets published on this occasion is that of Ga- 
briel Monod, Le role de la Normandie dans I'histoire de France (Paris, 
1911). 



II 

THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 

THE central fact of Norman history and the 
starting-point for its study is the event so bril- 
liantly commemorated by the millenary of 
191 1, the grant of Normandy to Rollo and his northern 
followers in the year 911. The history of Normandy, of 
course, began long before that year. The land was there, 
and likewise in large measure the people, that is to say, 
probably the greater part of the elements which went 
to make the population of the country at a later day; 
and the history of the region can be traced back several 
centuries. But after all, neither the Celtic civitates nor 
the Roman province of Lugdunensis Secunda nor the 
ecclesiastical province of Rouen which took its place 
nor the northwestern pagi of the Prankish empire were 
Normandy. They lacked the name — that is obvious; 
they lacked also individuality of character, which is 
more. They were a part, and not a distinctive part, of 
something else, whereas later Normandy was a separate 
entity with a life and a history of its own. And the 
dividing line must be drawn when the Northmen first 
established themselves permanently in the land and gave 
it a new name and a new history. 

It must be said that the date 911, like most exact 



THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 27 

dates in history, is somewhat arbitrary. The Northmen 
first invaded Normandy in 841, and their inroads did 
not cease until about 966, so that the year 911 falls 
near the middle of a century and a quarter of invasion 
and settlement, and marks neither the beginning nor 
the end of an epoch. It is also true that this date, like 
many another which appears in heavy-faced type in our 
histories, is not known with entire certainty, for some 
historians have placed in 912 or even later the events 
commonly assigned to that year. On the whole, however, 
there is good reason for maintaining 911 — and a thou- 
sandth anniversary must have some definite date to 
commemorate ! 

For the actual occurrences of that year, we have only 
the account of a romancing historian of a hundred years 
later, reenforced here and there by the exceedingly 
scanty records of the time. The main fact is clear, 
namely that the Frankish king, Charles the Simple, 
granted Rollo as a fief a considerable part, the eastern 
part, of later Normandy. Apparently Rollo did homage 
for his fief in feudal fashion by placing his hands between 
the hands of the king, something, we are told, which 
"neither his father, nor his grandfather, nor his great- 
grandfather before him had ever done for any man." 
Legend goes on to relate, however, that Rollo refused 
to kneel and kiss the king's foot, crying out in his own 
speech, "No, by God!" and that the companion to 
whom he delegated the unwelcome obligation performed 



28 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

it so clumsily that he overturned the king, to the great 
merriment of the assembled Northmen. Rollo did not 
receive the whole of the later duchy, but only the region 
on either side of the Seine which came to be known as 
Upper Normandy, and it was not till 924 that the North- 
men acquired also middle Normandy, or the Bessin, while 
the west, the Cotentin and the Avranchin, fell to them 
only in 933. 

As to Rollo's personality, we have only the evidence 
of later Norman historians of doubtful authority and 
the Norse saga of Harold Fairhair. If, as seems likely, 
their accounts relate to the same person, he was known 
in the north as Hrolf the Ganger, because he was so 
huge that no horse could carry him and he must needs 
gang afoot. A pirate at home, he was driven into exile 
by the anger of King Harold, whereupon he followed 
his trade in the Western Isles and in Gaul, and rose to 
be a great Jarl among his people. The saga makes him 
a Norwegian, but Danish scholars have sought to prove 
him a Dane, and more recently the cudgels have been 
taken up for his Swedish origin. To me the Norwegian 
theory seems on the whole the most probable, being 
based on a trustworthy saga and corroborated by other 
incidental evidence. Yet, however significant of Rollo's 
importance it may be that three great countries should 
each claim him as its own, like the seven cities that 
strove for the honor of Homer's birthplace, the ques- 
tion of his nationality is historically of subordinate 



THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 29 

interest, and at a time when national lines were not 
yet drawn, it is futile to fit the inadequate evidence 
into one or another theory. The important fact is that 
Norway, Denmark, and even more distant Sweden, all 
contributed to the colonists who settled in Normandy 
under Rollo and his successors, and the achievements 
of the Normans thus become the common heritage of 
the Scandinavian race. 

The colonization of Normandy was, of course, only 
a small part of the work of this heroic age of Scandina- 
vian expansion. The great emigration from the North 
in the ninth and tenth centuries has been explained in 
part by the growth of centralized government and the 
consequent departure of the independent, the turbu- 
lent, and the untamed for new fields of adventure; but 
its chief cause was doubtless that which lies back of 
colonizing movements in all ages, the growth of popu- 
lation and the need of more room. Five centuries ear- 
lier this land-hunger had pushed the Germanic tribes 
across the Rhine and Danube and produced the great 
wandering of the peoples which destroyed the Roman 
empire ; and the Viking raids were simply a later aspect 
of this same Volkerwanderung, retarded by the out- 
lying position of the Scandinavian lands and by the 
greater difficulty of migration by sea. For, unlike the 
Goths who swept across the map of Europe in vast 
curves of marching men, or the Franks who moved 
forward by slow stages of gradual settlement in their 



30 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

occupation of Roman Gaul, the Scandinavian invaders 
were men of the sea and migrated in ships. The deep 
fjords of Norway and the indented coast of the North 
Sea and the Baltic made them perforce sailors and 
fishermen and taught them the mastery of the wider 
ocean. In their dragon ships — shallow, clinker-built, 
half -decked craft, pointed at either end, low in the 
middle, where the gunwale was protected by a row of 
shields — they could cross the sea, explore creeks and 
inlets, and follow the course of rivers far above their 
mouth. The greater ships might reach the length of 
seventy-five feet and carry as many as one hundred and 
twenty men, but these were the largest, and even these 
offered but a slow means of migration. We must think 
of the whole movement at first as one of small and 
scattered bands, terrible more for their fierce, sudden, 
and skilful methods of attack, than for force of su- 
perior numbers or organization. The truth is that 
sea-power, whose strategic significance in modern war- 
fare Admiral Mahan did so much to make us appreciate, 
was in the ninth and tenth centuries, so far as western 
Europe was concerned, a Scandinavian monopoly. Mas- 
ters of the seas, the Northmen harried the coasts and 
river- valleys as they would, and there was none to drive 
them back. 

Outside of the Baltic, where the Danes ravaged the 
southern coast and the Swedes moved eastward to lay 
the foundations of the Russian state and to penetrate 



THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 31 

as far as Constantinople, two main routes lay open to 
the masters of the northern seas. One led west to the 
Orkneys, the Shetlands, and the coast of Scotland, and 
then either south to the shores of Ireland, or further 
west to Iceland, Greenland, and America. The other 
led through the North Sea to England, the Low Coun- 
tries, and the coast of Gaul. Both were used, and used 
freely, by the Vikings, and in both directions they ac- 
complished enduring results: — Iceland and the king- 
doms of the isles in the north, the beginnings of town 
life and commerce in Ireland, the Danelaw in England, 
and the duchy of Normandy. 

When the great northern invasions began at the close 
of the eighth century, Charles the Great ruled all the 
Christian lands of the western Continent. By fire and 
sword he converted the heathen Saxons of the north to 
Christianity and civilization and advanced his frontier 
to the Danish border, so that the pious monk of St. 
Gall laments that he did not conquer the Danes also 
— "be it that Divine Providence was not then on our 
side, or that our sins rose up against us." And this same 
gossiping chronicler — not the best of authorities it is 
true — has left us a striking picture of Charlemagne's 
first experience with the Scandinavian invaders: — 

Once Charles arrived by chance at a certain maritime 
town of Gallia Narbonensis. While he was sitting at dinner, 
and had not been recognized by the townspeople, some 
northern pirates came to carry on their depredations in that 



32 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

very port. When the ships were perceived some thought 
they were Jewish merchants, some that they were Africans, 
some Bretons. But the wise king, knowing from the shape and 
swiftness of the vessels what sort of crews they carried, said 
to those about him, "These ships bear no merchandize, but 
cruel foes." At these words all the Franks rivalled each 
other in the speed with which they rushed to attack the 
boats. But it was useless. The Northmen hearing that there 
stood the man whom they were wont to call Charles the 
Hammer, were afraid lest all their fleet should be taken in the 
port, and should be broken in pieces; and their flight was so 
rapid, that they withdrew themselves not only from the 
swords, but even from the eyes of those who wished to catch 
them. The religious Charles, however, seized by a holy fear, 
rose from the table, and looked out of the window towards the 
East, remaining long in that position,Tiis face bathed in tears. 
No one ventured to question him: but turning to his fol- 
lowers he said, " Know ye why I weep? Truly I fear not that 
these will injure me. But I am deeply grieved that in my life- 
time they should have been so near landing on these shores, and 
I am overwhelmed with sorrow as I look forward and see what 
evils they will bring upon my offspring and their people." ^ 

From the actuality of such an invasion the great 
Charles was spared, but in the British Isles it had al- 
ready begun. In 787 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells 
us there "first came three ships of Northmen out of 
Haeretha-land " [Denmark?], whereupon the reeve of 
the Dorset port "rode down to the place and would 
have driven them to the king's town, because he knew 
not who they were; and they there slew him. These 
were the first ships of Danishmen which sought the 

^ II, 14, as translated by Keary, Vikings, p. 136. 



THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 33 

land of the English nation." Six years later they fell 
upon the holy isle of Lindisfarne, pillaged the church 
sacred with the memories of Northumbrian Christianity, 
and slew the monks or drove them into the sea. In 807 
they first landed in Ireland, and "after this there came 
great sea-cast floods of foreigners into Erin, so that there 
was not a point thereof without a fleet." Then came the 
turn of the Continent, first along the coast of Frisia and 
Flanders, and then in what is now France. In 841, 
when the grandsons of Charlemagne were quarrelling 
over the fragments of his empire at Fontenay, the first 
fleet of Northmen entered the Seine; in 843 when they 
were making their treaty of partition at Verdun, the 
Vikings entered Nantes on St. John's Day and slew 
the bishop before the high altar as he intoned the Sur- 
sum corda of the mass. Within two years they sacked 
Hamburg and Paris. Wherever possible they established 
themselves at the mouths of the great rivers, often on 
an island like Walcheren, Noirmoutier, or the He de 
Rhe, whence the rivers opened the whole country to 
them — Elbe and Weser, Rhine and Meuse, Scheldt, 
Seine, Loire, and Garonne, even to the Guadalquivir, by 
which the Arabic chronicler tells us the "dark red sea- 
birds" penetrated to Seville. One band more venture- 
some than the rest, entered the Mediterranean and 
reached Marseilles, whence under their leader Hastings 
they sacked the Italian town of Luna, apparently in the 
belief that it was Rome. 



34 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

About the middle of the ninth century the number of 
the Norse pirates greatly increased and their ravages 
became more regular and constant, leading in many 
cases to permanent settlements. In 855 the Old English 
Chronicle tells us "the heathen men, for the first time, 
remained over winter in Sheppey," at the mouth of the 
Thames, and thereafter, year by year, it recounts the 
deeds of the Viking band which wintered in England and 
is called simply here, the army. It is no longer a matter of 
summer raids but of unbroken occupation. In 878 dur- 
ing midwinter "the army stole away to Chippenham and 
overran the land of the West-Saxons and sat down there ; 
and many of the people they drove beyond sea, and of 
the remainder the greater part they subdued and forced 
to obey them except King Alfred, and he, with a small 
band, with difficulty retreated to the woods and to the 
fastnesses of the moors." The following year a simi- 
lar band, now swollen into "the great army" made its 
appearance on the Continent and for fourteen years 
ravaged the territory between the Rhine and the Loire. 
Year after year "the steel of the heathen glistened"; 
in 886 they laid siege to Paris, which was relieved not 
by the king's valor but by his ofTering them Burgundy 
to plunder instead. A century later the English began 
to buy them ofif with Danegeld. "All men," laments 
a chronicler, "give themselves to flight. No one cries 
out. Stand and fight for your country, your church, 
your countrymen. What they ought to defend with 



THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 35 

arms, they shamefully redeem by payments." There 
was nothing to do but add a new petition to the litany, 
''From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord, deUver 
us." 

To the writers of the time, who could not see the 
permanent results of Viking settlement, the Northmen 
were barbarian pirates, without piety or pity, "who wept 
neither for their sins nor for their dead," and their ex- 
peditions were mere wanton pillage and destruction. 
Moreover, these writers were regularly monks or priests, 
and it was the church that suffered most severely. A 
walled town or castle might often successfully resist, 
but the monasteries, protected from Christian freeboot- 
ers by their sacred character, were simply so many oppor- 
tunities for plunder to the heathen of the north. Some- 
times the monks perished with their monastery, often 
they escaped only with their lives and a few precious 
title-deeds, to find on their return merely a heap of 
blackened ruins and a desolate countryside. Many re- 
ligious establishments utterly disappeared in the course 
of the invasions. In Normandy scarcely a church sur- 
vives anterior to the tenth century. As the monasteries 
were at this time the chief centres of learning and culture 
throughout western Europe, their losses were the losses 
of civilization, and in this respect the verdict of the mo- 
nastic chroniclers is justified. There is, however, another 
side to the story, which Scandinavian scholars have not 



36 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

been slow to emphasize. Heathen still and from one 
point of view barbarian, the Northmen had yet a culture 
of their own, well advanced on its material side, notable 
in its artistic skill, and rich in its treasures of poetry 
and story. Its material treasures have been in part 
recovered by the labors of northern archaeologists, 
while its literary wealth is now in large measure acces- 
sible in English in the numerous translations of sagas 
and Eddie poems. 

After all barbarism, like culture, is a relative thing, 
and judged by contemporary standards, the Vikings 
were not barbarians. They rather show a strange com- 
bination of the primitive and the civilized — elemental 
passions expressing themselves with a high degree of 
literary art, barbaric adornment wrought with skilled 
craftsmanship. Berserker rage supplemented by clever 
strategy, pitiless savagery combined with a strong sense 
of public order, constant feuds and murders coexistent 
with a most elaborate system of law and legal procedure. 
Young from our point of view, the civilization of the 
Vikings had behind it a history of perhaps fifteen cen- 
turies. 

On its material side Viking civilization is character- 
ized by a considerable degree of wealth and luxury. 
Much of this, naturally, was gained by pillage, but much 
also came by trade. The northern warriors do not seem 
to have had that contempt for traffic which has char- 
acterized many military societies, and they turned read- 



THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 37 

ily enough from war to commerce. In a Viking tomb 
recently discovered in the Hebrides there were found be- 
side the sword and spear and battle-axe of all warriors, 
a pair of scales, fit emblem of the double life the chief 
had led on earth and may have hoped to continue here- 
after! Of trade, and especially trade with the Orient, 
there is abundant evidence in the great treasures of gold 
and silver coin found in many regions of the north. 
The finely wrought objects of gold and silver and en- 
crusted metal, which were once supposed to have been 
imported from the south and east, are now known 
to have been in large part of native workmanship, in- 
fluenced, of course, by the imitation of foreign models, 
but also carrying out traditions of ornamentation, such 
as the use of animal forms, which can be traced back 
continuously to the earliest ages of Scandinavian history. 
Shields and damascened swords, arm-rings and neck- 
rings, pins and brooches — especially brooches, if you 
find an unknown object, says Montelius, call it a brooch 
and you will generally be right — all testify, both in 
their abundance and their beauty of workmanship, to an 
advanced stage of art and handicraft. 

This love of the north for luxury of adornment is 
amply seen in chronicle and saga. When the Irish drove 
the Vikings out of Limerick in 968 they took from them 
"their jewels and their best property, and their saddles 
beautiful and foreign, their gold and their silver, their 
beautifully woven cloth of all kinds and colors — satin 



38 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

and silk, pleasing and variegated, both scarlet and green, 
and all sorts of cloth in like manner." "How," asks 
the Valkyrie in the Lay of the Raven, "does the generous 
Prince Harold deal with the men of feats of renown that 
guard his land?" The Raven answers: — 

They are well cared for, the warriors that cast dice in 
Harold's court. They are endowed with wealth and with 
fair swords, with the ore of the Huns, and with maids from 
the East. They are glad when they have hopes of a battle, 
they will leap up in hot haste and ply the oars, snapping the 
oar-thongs and cracking the tholes. Fiercely, I ween, do they 
churn the water with their oars at the king's bidding. 

Quoth the Walkyrie : I will ask thee, for thou knowest the 
truth of all these things, of the meed of the Poets, since thou 
must know clearly the state of the minstrels that live with 
Harold. 

Quoth the Raven : It is easily seen by their cheer, and their 
gold rings, that they are among the friends of the king. They 
have red cloaks right fairly fringed, silver-mounted swords, 
and ring-woven sarks, gilt trappings, and graven helmets, 
wrist-fitting rings, the gifts of Harold.^ 

As regards social organization, Viking society shows 
the Germanic division into three classes, thrall, churl, 
and noble. Their respective characters and occupations 
are thus described in the Rigsmal: — 

Thrall was of swarthy skin, his hands wrinkled, his 
knuckles bent, his fingers thick, his face ugly, his back broad, 
his heels long. He began to put forth his strength, binding 
bast, making loads, and bearing home faggots the weary 
long day. His children busied themselves with building 

* Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i, p. 257. 



THE COMING' OF THE NORTHMEN 39 

fences, dunging plowland, tending swine, herding goats, 
and digging peat. Their names were Sooty and Cowherd, 
Clumsy and Lout and Laggard, etc. Carl, or churl, was 
red and ruddy, with rolling eyes, and took to breaking 
oxen, building plows, timbering houses, and making carts. 
Earl, the noble, had yellow hair, his cheeks were rosy, his 
eyes were keen as a young serpent's. His occupation was 
shaping the shield, bending the bow, hurling the javelin, 
shaking the lance, riding horses, throwing dice, fencing, 
and swimming. He began to waken war, to redden the field, 
and to fell the doomed.^ 

Both churl and earl were largely represented in those 
who went to sea, but the nobility naturally preponder- 
ated, and it is particularly their exploits which the 
sagas and poems celebrate. Viking warfare was no mere 
clash of swords; they conducted their military opera- 
tions with skill and foresight, and showed great power 
of adapting themselves to new conditions, whether that 
meant the invasion of an open country or the siege of a 
fortified town. Much, however, must be credited to their 
furor Teutonicus, to that exuberance of military spirit 
which they had inherited from far-ofif ancestors. Not 
all were wolf-coated Bearsarks, but all seemed to have 
that delight in war and conflict for their own sakes 
which breathes through their poetry: — 

The sword in the king's hand bit through the weeds of 
Woden [mail] as if it were whisked through water, the spear- 
points clashed, the shields were shattered, the axes rattled 
on the heads of the warriors. Targets and skulls were trod- 

1 Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i, pp. 236-40. 



40 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

den under the Northmen's shield-fires [weapons] and the 
hard heels of their hilts. There was a din in the island, the 
kings dyed the shining rows of shields in the blood of men. 
The wound-fires [blades] burnt in the bloody wounds, the 
halberds bowed down to take the life of men, the ocean of gore 
dashed upon the swords'-ness, the flood of the shafts fell 
upon the beach of Stord. Halos of war mixed under the 
vault of the bucklers; the battle-tempest blew underneath 
the clouds of the targets, the lees of the sword-edges [blood] 
pattered in the gale of Woden. Many a man fell into the 
stream of the brand. ^ 

Again : — 

Brands broke against the black targets, wounds waxed 
when the princes met. The blades hammered against the 
helm-crests, the wound-gravers, the sword's point, bit. I 
heard that there fell in the iron-play Woden's oak [heroes] 
before the swords [the sword-belt's ice]. 

Second Burden : There was a linking of points and a gnash- 
ing of edges: Eric got renown there. 

Second Stave: The prince reddened the brand, there was 
a meal for the ravens; the javelin sought out the life of 
man, the gory spears flew, the destroyer of the Scots fed 
the steed of the witch [wolves], the sister of Nari [Hell] 
trampled on the supper of the eagles [corses]. The cranes of 
battle [shafts] flew against the walls of the sword [bucklers], 
the wound-mew's lips [the arrows' barbs] were not left thirsty 
for gore. The wolf tore the wounds, and the wave of the 
sword [blood] plashed against the beak of the raven. 

Third Burden: The lees of the din of war [blood] fell upon 
Gialf 's steed [ship] : Eric gave the wolves carrion by the sea. 

Third Stave: The flying javelin bit, peace was belied there, 
the wolf was glad, and the bow was drawn, the bolts clat- 
tered, the spear-points bit, the flaxen-bowstring bore the 

* Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i, p. 265/. 



THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 41 

arrows out of the bow. He brandished the buckler on his 
arm, the rouser of the play of blades — he is a mighty hero. 
The fray grew greater everywhere about the king. It was 
famed east over the sea, Eric's war-faring.^ 

Or listen to the weird sisters as they weave the web of 
Ireland's fate under Brian Boru: — 

Wide-stretched is the warp presaging the slaughter, the 
hanging cloud of the beam; it is raining blood. The gray web 
of the hosts is raised up on the spears, the web which we 
the friends of Woden are filling with red weft. 

This web is warped with the guts of men, and heavily 
weighted with human heads; blood-stained darts are the 
shafts, iron-bound are the stays; it is shuttled with arrows. 
Let us strike with our swords this web of victory! 

War and Sword-clasher, Sangrid and Swipple, are weaving 
with drawn swords. The shaft shall sing, the shield shall 
ring, the helm-hound [axe] shall fall on the target. ^ 

And those who met their death in battle had reserved 
for them a similar existence in the life to come, not 
doomed like the ' straw-dead ' to tread wet and chill and 
dusky ways to the land of Hel, but — I am quoting 
Gummere ^ — as weapon-dead faring "straightway to 
Odin, unwasted by sickness, in the full strength of man- 
hood," to spend their days in glorious battle and their 
nights in equally glorious feasting in the courts of Val- 
halla. 

In his cradle the young Viking was lulled by such 
songs as this : — 

1 Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i, pp. 268-70. ^ JUd^^ j^ p. 281 /. 
^ Germanic Origins (New York, 1892), p. 305/. 



42 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

My mother said they should buy me a boat and fair oars, 
and that I should go abroad with the Vikings, should stand 
forward in the bows and steer a dear bark, and so wend to the 
haven and cut down man after man there. 

When he grows up the earl's daughter scorns him as a 
boy who "has never given a warm meal to the wolf," 
"seen the raven in autumn scream over the carrion 
draft," or "been where the shell-thin edges" of the 
blades crossed ; whereupon he wins a place by her side 
by replying: — 

I have walked wiih bloody brand and with whistling 
spear, with the wound-bird following me. The Vikings made 
a fierce attack; we raised a furious storm, the flame ran over 
the dwellings of men, we laid the bleeding corses to rest in 
the gates of the city.^ 

And at the end, like Ragnar Lodbrok captured and dy- 
ing in the pit of serpents, he can tell his tale of feeding 
the eagle and the she-wolf since he first reddened the 
sword at the age of twenty, and end his life undaunted to 
the ever-recurring refrain, "We hewed with the sword " : 

Death has no terrors, I am willing to depart. They are 
calling me home, the Fays whom Woden the Lord of Hosts 
has sent me from his hall. Merrily shall I drink ale in my 
high-seat with the Anses. My life days are done. Laughing 
will I die.'^ 

Politically, Viking society was aristocratic, but an 
aristocracy in which all the nobles were equal. "We 
have no lord, we are all equal," said Rollo's men when 

* Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i, p. 373. * Ibid., 11, p. 345. 



THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 43 

asked who was their lord ; and men thus minded were not 
likely to spend their time casting dice in King Harold's 
court, even if their independence meant the wolf's lot 
of exile. What kind of a political organization they 
were likely to form can be seen from two examples of 
the Viking age. One is Iceland, described by Lord 
Bryce ^ as "an almost unique instance of a community 
whose culture and creative power flourished indepen- 
dently of any favoring material conditions," — that 
curiously decentralized and democratic commonwealth 
where the necessities of life created a government with 
judicial and legislative duties, while the feeling of equal- 
ity and local independence prevented the government 
from acquiring any administrative or executive func- 
tions, — a community with "a great deal of law and no 
central executive, a great many courts and no authority 
to carry out their judgments." The other example is 
Jomburg, that strange body of Jomvikings established 
in Pomerania, at the mouth of the Oder, and held by a 
military gild under the strictest discipline. Only men of 
undoubted bravery between the ages of eighteen and 
fifty were admitted to membership; no women were 
allowed in the castle, and no man could be absent from 
it for more than three days at a time. Members as- 
sumed the duty of mutual support and revenge, and 
plunder was to be distributed by lot. 

* " Primitive Iceland," in his Studies in History and Jurisprudence 
(Oxford, 1901), pp. 263 Jf. 



44 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

Neither of these types of Viking community was to be 
reproduced in Normandy, for both were the outgrowth 
of peculiar local conditions, and the Northmen were 
too adaptable to found states with a rubber-stamp. A 
loose half-state like Iceland could exist only where the 
absence of neighbors or previous inhabitants removed 
all danger of complications, whether domestic or foreign. 
A strict warrior gild like that of Jomburg could arise 
only in a fortress. Whatever form Viking society would 
take in Normandy was certain to be determined in large 
measure by local conditions; yet it might well contain 
elements found in the other societies — the Icelandic 
sense of equality and independence, and the military 
discipline of the Jomvikings set in the midst of their 
Wendish foes. And both of these elements are character- 
istic of the Norman state. 

Such, very briefly sketched, were the Northmen who 
came to Normandy. We have now to follow them in 
their new home. 

We must note in the first place that the relations be- 
tween Normandy and the north were not ended with 
the grant of 911. We must think of the new Norman 
state, not as a planet sent off into space to move sepa- 
rate and apart in a new orbit, but as a colony, an out- 
post of the Scandinavian peoples in the south, fed by 
new bands of colonists from the northern home and 
only gradually drawn away from its connections with 
the north and brought into the political system of 



THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 45 

Prankish Gaul and its neighbors. For something like 
a hundred years after the coming of Rollo the key to 
Norman history is found in this fact and in the result- 
ing interplay of Scandinavian and Frankish influences. 
The very grant of 911 was susceptible of being differ- 
ently regarded from the point of view of the two parties. 
Charles the Simple probably thought he was creating 
a new fief with the Norman chief as his vassal, bound to 
him by feudal ties, while to Rollo, innocent of feudal 
ideas, the grant may well have seemed a gift outright 
to be held by himself and his companions as land was 
held at home. From one point of view a feudal holding, 
from another an independent Scandinavian state, the 
contradiction in Normandy's position explains much of 
its early history. The new colony was saved from absorp- 
tion in its surroundings by continued migration from 
the north ; before it became Frankish and feudal it thus 
had time to establish itself firmly and draw tightly the 
lines which separated it from its neighbors. At once a 
Frankish county and a Danish colony, it slowly formed 
itself into the semi-independent duchy which is the his- 
toric Normandy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. 
Although Rollo was baptized in 912 and signalized 
his conversion by extensive grants of land to the great 
churches and monasteries of his new territories, his 
Christianity sat lightly upon him and left him a Norse 
sea-rover at heart till the end, when he sought to ap- 
pease the powers of the other world, not only by gifts 



46 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

of gold to the church, but by human sacrifices to the 
northern gods. His legislation, so far as it can be re- 
constructed from the shadowy accounts of later histo- 
rians, was fundamentally Scandinavian in character, and 
his followers guarded jealously the northern traditions 
of equality and independence. His son, William Long- 
sword, was a more Christian and Prankish type, but his 
death, celebrated in a Latin poem which represents the 
earliest known example of popular epic in Normandy, 
was the signal for a Scandinavian and pagan reaction. 
We hear of fresh arrivals on the Seine, Vikings who wor- 
shipped Thor and Odin, of an independent band at 
Bayeux under a certain Haigrold or Harold, and even of 
appeals for reenforcements from the Normans to the 
Northmen beyond the sea. The dukes of Rouen, says the 
Saga oj St. Olaf, "remember well their kinship with the 
chiefs of Norway; they hold them in such honor that 
they have always been the best friends of the Norwe- 
gians, and all the Norwegians who wish find refuge in 
Normandy." Not till the beginning of the eleventh cen- 
tury does the Scandinavian immigration come to an 
end and Normandy stand fully on its own feet. 

Not until the eleventh century also does the history 
of Normandy emerge from the uncertain period of legend 
and tradition and reach an assured basis of contempo- 
rary evidence. Throughout Europe, the tenth century 
is one of the most uncertain and obscure of all the Chris- 
tian centuries. To the critic, as an Oxford don distin- 



THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 47 

guished for knowledge of this epoch once remarked, its 
delightful obscurity makes it all the more interesting, 
but there are limits to the delights of obscurity, and a 
French scholar who has tried to reconstruct the history 
of this period in Spain finds that all surviving documen- 
tary sources of information are fabrications! Matters 
are not so bad as that for Normandy, for the forgers 
there chose other periods in which to place their prod- 
ucts, but there are for the tenth century practically 
no contemporary documents or contemporary Norman 
chronicles. The earliest Norman historian, Dudo, dean 
of Saint-Quentin, wrote after the year 1000 and had 
no personal knowledge of the beginnings of the Nor- 
man state. Diffuse, rhetorical, credulous, and ready to 
distort events in order to glorify the ancestors of 
the Norman dukes who were his patrons, Dudo is any- 
thing but a trustworthy writer, and only the most cir- 
cumspect criticism can glean a few facts from his con- 
fused and turgid rhetoric. Yet he was copied by his 
Norman successors, in prose and in verse, and has found 
his defenders among patriotic Normans of a more mod- 
ern time. Not until quite recent years has his fundamen- 
tal untrustworthiness been fully established, and with 
it has vanished all hope of any detailed knowledge of 
early Norman history. Only with the eleventh century 
do we reach a solid foundation of annals and charters 
in the reigns of the princes whom Dudo seeks to glorify 
in the person of their predecessors. And when we reach 



48 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

this period, the heroic age of conquest and settlement is 
over, and the Normans have become much as other 
Frenchmen. 

' At this point the fundamental question forces itself 
upon us, how far was Normandy affected by Scandi- 
navian influences? What in race and language, in law 
and custom, was the contribution of the north to Nor- 
mandy? And the answer must be that in most respects 
the tangible contribution was slight. Whatever may have 
been the state of affairs in the age of colonization and 
settlement, by the century which followed the Normans 
had become to a surprising degree absorbed by their 
environment. 

It is now generally admitted, says Professor Maitland,* 
that for at least half a century before the battle of Hastings, 
the Normans were Frenchmen, French in their language, 
French in their law, proud indeed of their past history, very 
ready to fight against other Frenchmen if Norman home- 
rule was endangered, but still Frenchmen, who regarded 
Normandy as a member of the state or congeries of states 
that owed service, we can hardly say obedience, to the king 
at Paris. Their spoken language was French, their written 
language was Latin, but the Latin of France; the style of 
their legal documents was the style of the French chancery; 
very few of the technical terms of their law were of Scandi- 
navian origin. When at length the 'custom' of Normandy 
appears in writing, it takes its place among other French 
customs, and this although for a long time past Normandy 
has formed one of the dominions of a prince, between whom 
and the king of the French there has been Httle love and 

1 Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, i, p. 66. 



THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 49 

frequent war; and the peculiar characteristics which mark 
off the custom of Normandy from other French customs 
seem due much rather to the legislation of Henry of Anjou 
than to any Scandinavian tradition. 

The law of Normandy was by this time Prankish, 
and its speech was French. Even the second duke, 
William Longsword, found it necessary to send his son 
to Bayeux to learn Norse, for it was no longer spoken at 
Rouen. And in the French of Normandy, the Norman 
dialect, the Scandinavian element is astonishingly small, 
as careful students of the local patois tell us. Only in 
one department of life, the life of the sea, is any con- 
siderable Scandinavian influence discernible, and the 
historian of the French navy, Bourel de la Ronciere, has 
some striking pages on the survivals of the language of 
the Norse Vikings in the daily speech of the French 
sailor and fisherman. 

The question of race is more difficult, and is of course 
quite independent of the question of language, for lan- 
guage, as has been well said, is not a test of race but 
a test of social contact, and the fundamental physi- 
cal characteristics of race are independent of speech. 
"Skulls," says Rhys," are harder than consonants, and 
races lurk behind when languages slip away." On this 
point again scientific examination is unfavorable to ex- 
tended Scandinavian influence. Pronounced northern 
types, of course, occur, — I remember, on my first jour- 
ney through Normandy, seeing at a wayside station a 



50 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

peasant who might have walked that moment out of^ a 
Wisconsin lumber-camp or a Minnesota wheat-field, — 
but the statistics of anthropometry show a steady pre- 
ponderance of the round-headed type which prevails 
in other parts of France. Only in two regions does the 
Teutonic type assert itself strongly, in the lower valley 
of the Seine and in the Cotentin, and it is in these re- 
gions and at points along the shore that place-names 
of Scandinavian origin are most frequent. The termi- 
nations bee and fleur, beuf and ham and dalle and tot — 
Bolbec, Harfleur, Quillebeuf, Ouistreham, Dieppedalle, 
Yvetot — tell the same story as the terms used in navi- 
gation, namely that the Northmen were men of the sea 
and settled in the estuaries and along the coast. The 
earlier population, however, though reduced by war and 
pillage and famine, was not extinguished. It survived 
in sufficient numbers to impose its language on its con- 
querors, to preserve throughout the greater part of the 
country its fundamental racial type, and to make these 
Northmen of the sea into Normans of the land. 

What, then, was the Scandinavian contribution to the 
making of Normandy if it was neither law nor speech 
nor race? First and foremost, it was Normandy itself, 
created as a distinct entity by the Norman occupa- 
tion and the grant to Rollo and his followers, without 
whom it would have remained an undifferentiated part 
of northern France. Next, a new element in the popu- 
lation, numerically small in proportion to the mass, but 



THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 51 

a leaven to the whole — quick to absorb Prankish law 
and Christian culture but retaining its northern quali- 
ties of enterprise, of daring, and of leadership. It is no 
accident that the names of the leaders in early Norman 
movements are largely Norse. And finally a race of 
princes, high-handed and masterful but with a talent 
for political organization, state-builders at home and 
abroad, who made Normandy the strongest and most 
centralized principality in France and joined to it a 
kingdom beyond the seas which became the strongest 
state in western Europe. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The best outline of the beginnings of Normandy is H. Prentout, 
Essai sur les origines et la fondation du duche de Normandie (Paris, 
191 1). For the Prankish side of the Norse expeditions see VV. Vogel, 
Die Normannen und das frdnkische Reich (Heidelberg, 1906), supple- 
mented by F. Lot, in the Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Charles, LXix 
(1908). Their devastation of Normandy is illustrated by the fate of 
the monastery of Saint-Wandrille: F. Lot, Etudes critiques sur I'abbaye 
de Saint-Wandrille (Paris, 1913), ch. 3. There is a vast literature in 
the Scandinavian languages; for the titles of fundamental works by 
Steenstrup, Munch, Worsaae, and Alexander Bugge, see Charles 
Gross, Sources and Literature of English History (London, 1915), § 42. 
Considerable material in English has been published in the Saga-Book 
of the Viking Society (London, since 1895). On the material culture 
of the north see Sophus Miiller, Nordische Altertumskunde (Strass- 
burg, 1897-98), and the various works of Montelius. The early poetry 
is collected and translated by Vigfusson and Powell, Corpus Poeticum 
Boreale (Oxford, 1883). Convenient summaries in English are C. F. 
Keary, The Vikings in Western Christendom (London, 1891); A. 
Mawer, The Vikings (Cambridge, 19JL3); and L. M. Larson, Canute the 
Great (New York, 191 2). 



) 



Ill 

NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 

AFTER the coming of the Northmen the chief 
event in Norman history is the conquest of 
England, and just as relations with the north 
are the chief feature of the tenth century, so relations 
with England dominate the eleventh century, and the 
central point is the conquest of 1066. In this series of 
events the central figure is, of course, William the Con- 
queror, by descent duke of Normandy and by conquest 
king of England. 

Of William's antecedents we have no time to speak 
at length. Grandson of the fourth Norman duke, 
Richard the Good, William was the son of Duke Robert, 
who met his death in Asia Minor in 1035 while return- 
ing from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. To distinguish him 
from the later duke of the same name he is called Robert 
I or Robert the Magnificent, sometimes and quite in- 
correctly, Robert the Devil, by an unwarranted confu- 
sion with this hero, or rather villain, of romance and 
grand opera. A contemporary of the great English king 
Canute, Robert was a man of renown in the Europe of 
the early eleventh century, and if our sources of in- 
formation permitted us to know the history of his brief 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 53 

reign, we should probably find that much that was dis- 
tinctive of the Normandy of his son's day can be traced 
back to his time. More than once in history has a great 
father been eclipsed by a greater son. The fact should 
be added, which William's contemporaries never al- 
lowed him to forget, that he was an illegitimate son. His 
mother Arlette was the daughter of a tanner of Falaise, 
and while it is not clear that Duke Robert was ever mar- 
ried to any one else, his union with Arlette had no higher 
sanction than the Danish custom of his forefathers. 
Their son was generally known in his day as William 
the Bastard, and only the great achievements of his 
reign succeeded in replacing this, first by William the 
Great and later by William the Conqueror. 

Were it not for the resulting confusion with other 
great Williams, — one of whom has recently been raised 
by admiring subjects to the rank of William the Great- 
est ! — there would be a certain advantage in retain- 
ing the title of great, in order to remind ourselves that 
William was not only a conqueror but a great ruler. The 
greatest secular figure in the Europe of his day, he is 
also one of the greatest in the line of English sovereigns, 
whether we judge him by capacity for rule or by the re- 
sults of his reign, and none has had a more profound ef- 
fect on the whole current of English history. The late 
Edward A. Freeman, who devoted five stout volumes to 
the history of the Norman Conquest and of William, and 
who never shrank from superlatives, goes still further; — 



54 NORMANS IN EUROPEAT^ HISTORY 

No man that ever trod this earth was jver endowed with 
greater natural gifts; to no man was it ever granted to ac- 
complish greater things. If we look only to the scale of a 
man's acts without regard to their moral character, we must 
hail in the victor of Val-es-dunes, of Varaville, and of Senlac, 
in the restorer of Normandy, the Conqueror of England, one 
who may fairly claim his place in the first rank of the world's 
greatest men. No man ever did his work more thoroughly 
at the moment ; no man ever left his work behind him as more 
truly an abiding possession for all time. ... If we cannot 
give him a niche among pure patriots and heroes, he is quite 
as little entitled to a place among mere tyrants and destroy- 
ers. William of Normandy has no claim to a share in the pure 
glory of Timoleon, Alfred, and Washington; he cannot even 
claim the more mingled fame of Alexander, Charles, and 
Cnut; but he has still less in common with the mere ene- 
mies of their species, with the Nabuchodonosors, the Swegens, 
and the Buonapartes, whom God has sent from time to time 
as simple scourges of a guilty world. . . . He never wholly 
cast away the thoughts of justice and mercy, and in his 
darkest hours had still somewhat of the fear of God before 
his eyes.^ 

I have quoted the essence of Freeman's characteriza- 
tion, not because it seems to me wholly just or even 
historical, but in order to set forth vividly the im- 
portance of William and his work. It is not the histo- 
rian's business to award niches in a hall of fame. He is 
no Rhadamanthus, to separate the Alfreds of this world 
from the Nebuchadnezzars, the Washingtons from the 
Napoleons. So far as he deals with individuals, his busi- 
ness is to explain to us each man in the light of his time 

^ History of the Norman Conquest (third edition), n, pp. 164-67. 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 55 

and its conditions, not to compare him with men of 
far distant times and places in order to arrange all in a 
final scale of values. It was once the fashion in debating 
societies to discuss whether Demosthenes was a greater 
orator than Cicero, and whether either was the equal 
of Daniel Webster. It is even more futile to consider 
whether William the Conqueror was a greater man than 
Alexander or a less than George Washington, for the 
quantities are incommensurable. So far as comparisons 
of this sort are at all legitimate, they must be instituted 
between similar things, between contemporaries or be- 
tween men in quick sequence. When they deal with wide 
intervals of time and circumstance, they wrest each 
man from his true setting and become fundamentally 
unhistorical. 

An able general, strong in battle and still stronger in 
strategy and craft, a skilful diplomat, a born ruler of 
men, William was yet greater in the combination of 
vision, patience, and masterful will which make the 
statesman, and the results of his statesmanship are 
writ large on the page of English history. To his con- 
temporaries his most striking characteristic was his 
pitiless strength and inflexible will, and if they had been 
familiar with Nietzsche's theory of the 'overman,' they 
would certainly have placed him in that class. Stark 
and stern and wrathful, the author of the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle approaches him, as Freeman well says,^ "with 

^ Norman Conquest, n, p. i66. 



56 NORMANS IN EUROPEA> HISTORY 

downcast eyes and bated breath, as if he were hardly 
dealing with a man of like passions with himself but 
were rather drawing the portrait of a being of another 
nature." This, the most adequate characterization of 
the Uebermensch of the eleventh century, runs as fol- 
lows: ^ 

If any would know what manner of man king William 
was, the glory that he obtained, and of how many lands he 
was lord; then will we describe him as we have known him, 
we, who have looked upon him and who once lived in his 
court. This king William, of whom we are speaking, was a 
very wise and a great man, and more honoured and more 
powerful than any of his predecessors. He was mild to those 
good men who loved God, but severe beyond measure towards 
those who withstood his will. He founded a noble monastery 
on the spot where God permitted him to conquer England, 
and he established monks in it, and he made it very rich. In 
his days the great monastery at Canterbury was built, and 
many others also throughout England; moreover this land 
was filled with monks who lived after the rule of St. Benedict; 
and such was the state of religion in his days that all that 
would might observe that which was prescribed by their 
respective orders. King William was also held in much 
reverence : he wore his crown three times every year when 
he was in England : at Easter he wore it at Winchester, at 
Pentecost at Westminster, and at Christmas at Gloucester. 
And at these times, all the men of England were with him, 
archbishops, bishops, abbots, and earls, thanes, and knights. 
So also, was he a very stern and a wrathful man, so that 
none durst do anything against his will, and he kept in prison 
those earls who acted against his pleasure. He removed 
bishops from their sees, and abbots from their offices, and 

^ Translated by Giles (London, 1847), pp. 461-63. 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 57 

he imprisoned thanes, and at length he spared not his own 
brother Odo. This Odo was a very powerful bishop in Nor- 
mandy, his see was that of Bayeux, and he was foremost to 
serve the king. He had an earldom in England, and when 
William was in Normandy he was the first man in this coun- 
try, and him did he cast into prison. Amongst other things 
the good order that William established is not to be forgotten; 
it was such that any man, who was himself aught, might 
travel over the kingdom with a bosom-full of gold unmo- 
lested; and no man durst kill another, however great the 
injury he might have received from him. He reigned over 
England, and being sharp-sighted to his own interest, he sur- 
veyed the kingdom so thoroughly that there was not a single 
hide of land throughout the whole of which he knew not the 
possessor, and how much it was worth, and this he after- 
wards entered in his register. The land of the Britons was 
under his sway, and he built castles therein; moreover he had 
full dominion over the Isle of Man [Anglesey]: Scotland 
also was subject to him from his great strength; the land of 
Normandy was his by inheritance, and he possessed the 
earldom of Maine; and had he lived two years longer he 
would have subdued Ireland by his prowess, and that with- 
out a battle. Truly there was much trouble in these times, 
and very great distress; he caused castles to be built, and 
oppressed the poor. The king was also of great sternness, 
and he took from his subjects many marks of gold, and many 
hundred pounds of silver, and this, either with or without 
right, and with little need. He was given to avarice, and 
greedily loved gain. He made large forests for the deer, and 
enacted laws therewith, so that whoever killed a hart or a 
hind should be blinded. As he forbade killing the deer, so 
also the boars; and he loved the tall stags as if he were their 
father. He also appointed concerning the hares, that they 
should go free. The rich complained and the poor murmured, 
but he was so sturdy that he recked nought of them; they 



58 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

must will all that the king willed, if they would live; or 
would keep their lands; or would hold their possessions; or 
would be maintained in their rights. Alas! that any man 
should so exalt himself, and carry himself in his pride over all! 
May Almighty God show mercy to his soul, and grant him 
the forgiveness of his sins! We have written concerning 
him these things, both good and bad, that virtuous men might 
follow after the good, and wholly avoid the evil, and might 
go in the way that leadeth to the kingdom of heaven. 

This Requiescat of the monk of Peterborough has 
carried us forward half a century, till the Conqueror, in 
the full maturity of his power and strength, rode to his 
death down the steep street of the burning town of 
Mantes and was buried in his own great abbey-church 
at Caen. And the good peace that he gave the land at 
the end came, both in Normandy and in England, only 
after many stormy years of war, rebellion, and strife. 
William was but sixty when he died ; when his father was 
laid away in the basilica of far-off Nicaea, he was only 
seven or at most eight. The conquest of England was 
made in his fortieth year, when he had already reigned 
thirty-one years as duke. Or, if we deduct the years of 
his youth, the conquest of England falls just halfway 
between his coming of age and his death. I give these 
figures to adjust the perspective. William's place in the 
line of English kings is so prominent and his achieve- 
ments In England are so Important that they always 
tend to overshadow In our minds his earlier years as 
duke. Yet without these formative years there could 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 59 

have been no conquest of England, and without some 
study of them that conquest cannot be understood. 

If we pass over rapidly, as for lack of information we 
must needs do, the dozen years of William's minority, we 
find his reign in Normandy chiefly occupied with his 
struggles with his vassals, his neighbors, and the king 
of France, all a necessary consequence of his feudal 
position as duke. The Norman vassals, always tur- 
bulent and rebellious, seem to have broken forth anew 
upon the death of Robert the Magnificent, and such 
accounts as have reached us of the events of the next 
twelve years reveal a constant state of anarchy and dis- 
order. The revolt of the barons came to a head in 1047, 
when the whole of Lower Normandy rose under the 
leadership of the two chief vicomtes of the region, Ranulf 
of Bayeux and Neel of Saint-Sauveur, the ruins of whose 
family castle of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte still greet 
the traveller who leaves Cherbourg for Paris. William, 
who was hunting in the neighborhood of Valognes, was 
obliged to flee half-clad in the night and to pick his way 
alone by devious paths across the enemy's country to 
his castle of Falaise. With the assistance of the French 
king he was able to collect an army from Upper Nor- 
mandy and meet the rebels on the great plain of Val-des- 
Dunes, near Caen, where the Mont-joie of the French 
and the Dex aie of the duke's followers answered the 
barons' appeals to their local saints of St. Sauveur, 
St. Sever, and St. Amand. William was victorious; the 



6o NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

leaders of the revolt were sent into exile, but one of 
them, Grimoud of Plessis, the traitor, apparently he 
who had sought William's death in the night at Va- 
lognes, was put in prison at Rouen in irons which he 
wore until his death. 

With the collapse of the great revolt and the razing 
of the castles of the revolting barons, Normandy began 
to enjoy a period of internal peace and order. Externally, 
however, difficulties rather increased with the growing 
power of the young duke. In discussions of feudal soci- 
ety it is too often assumed that if the feudal obligations 
are observed between lords and vassals, all will go well, 
and that the anarchy of which the Middle Ages are full 
was the result of violations of these feudal ties. Now, 
while undoubtedly a heavy account must be laid at the 
door of direct breaches of the feudal bond, it must also 
be remembered that there was a fundamental defect 
in the very structure of feudal society. We may express 
this defect by saying that the feudal ties were only verti- 
cal and not lateral. The lord was bound to his vassal and 
the vassal to his lord, and so far as these relations went 
they provided a nexus of social and legal relations which 
might hold society together. But there was no tie be- 
tween two vassals of the same lord, nothing whatever 
which bound one of them to live in peace and amity with 
the other. Quite the contrary. War being the normal 
state of European society in the feudal period, the right 
to carry on private war was one of the cherished rights 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 6i 

of the feudal baron, and it extended wherever it was not 
restricted by the bonds of fealty and vassalage. The 
duke of Normandy and the count of Anjou were both 
vassals of the king of France, but their relations to each 
other were those of complete independence, and, save 
for some special agreement or friendship, were normally 
relations of hostility. 

And so an important part of Norman history has to 
treat of the struggles with the duchy's neighbors, Flan- 
ders on the north, the royal domain on the east, Maine 
and Anjou to the southward, and Brittany on the west. 
Fortunately for Normandy, the Bretons were but loosely 
organized, while the Flemings, compacted into one of 
the strongest of the French fiefs, were generally friendly, 
and the friendship was in this period cemented by Wil- 
liam's marriage to Matilda, daughter of the count of 
Flanders, one of the few princely marriages of the time 
which was founded upon affection and observed with 
fidelity. With Anjou the case was different. Beginning 
as a border county over against the Bretons of the lower 
Loire, with the black rock of Angers as its centre and 
fortress, Anjou, though still comparatively small in 
area, had grown into one of the strongest states of west- 
ern France. Under a remarkable line of counts, Geof- 
fiey Greygown, Fulk the Red, and Fulk the Black, an- 
cestors of the Plantagenet kings of England, it had 
become the dominant power on the Loire, and now under 
their successor Geoffrey the Hammer it threatened 



62 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

further expansion by hammering its frontiers still fur- 
ther to the north and east. Geoffrey, William's contem- 
porary and rival, is known to us by a striking charac- 
terization written by his nephew and successor and 
forming a typical bit of feudal biography: ^ 

My uncle Geoffrey became a knight in his father's life- 
time and began his knighthood by wars against his neighbors, 
one against the Poitevins, whose count he captured at Mont 
Couer, and another against the people of Maine, whose count, 
named Herbert Bacon, he likewise took. He also carried on 
war against his own father, in the course of which he com- 
mitted many evil deeds of which he afterward bitterly re- 
pented. After his father died on his return from Jerusalem, 
Geoffrey possessed his lands and the city of Angers, and 
fought Count Thibaud of Blois, son of Count Odo, and by 
gift of King Henry received the city of Tours, which led 
to another war with Count Thibaud, in the course of which, 
at a battle between Tours and Amboise, Thibaud was cap- 
tured with a thousand of his knights. And so, besides the 
part of Touraine inherited from his father, he acquired 
Tours and the castles round about — Chinon, L'lle-Bou- 
chard, Chateaurenault, and Saint-Aignan. After this he had a 
war with William, count of the Normans, who later acquired 
the kingdom of England and was a magnificent king, and 
with the people of France and of Bourges, and with William 
count of Poitou and Aimeri viscount of Thouars and Hoel 
count of Nantes and the Breton counts of Rennes and with 
Hugh count of Maine, who had thrown off his fealty. Because 
of all these wars and the prowess he showed therein he was 
rightly called the Hammer, as one who hammered down his 
enemies. 

^ Fulk Rechin, in Chroniques des comtes d'Anjou (ed. Marchegay), p. 
378/; (ed. Halphen and Poupardin, Paris, 1913). PP- 235-37. 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 63 

In the last year of his life he made me his nephew a knight 
at the age of seventeen in the city of Angers, at the feast 
of Pentecost, in the year of the Incarnation 1060, and granted 
me Saintonge and the city of Saintes because of a quarrel 
he had with Peter of Didonne. In this same year King Henry 
died on the nativity of St. John, and my uncle Geoffrey 
on the third day after Martinmas came to a good end. 
For in the night which preceded his death, laying aside 
all care of knighthood and secular things, he became a 
monk in the monastery of St. Nicholas, which his father 
and he had built with much devotion and endowed with 
their goods. 

The great source of conflict between William and 
Geoffrey was the Intervening county of Maine, whence 
the Angevlns had gained possession of the Norman 
fortresses of Domfront and Alengon, and It was not till 
after Geoffrey's death. In 1063, that the capture of Its 
chief city, LeMans, completed that union of Normandy 
and Maine which was to last through the greater part 
of Norman history. The conquest of Maine was the 
first fruit of William's work as conqueror. 

With William's suzerain, the king of France, rela- 
tions were more complicated. Legally there could be no 
question that the duke of Normandy was the feudal 
vassal of the French king and as such bound to the obli- 
gations of loyalty and service which flowed from his 
oath of homage and fealty. Actually, In the society 
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such bonds were 
freely and frequently broken, yet they were not thrown 
off. Here, as In many other phases of mediaeval life. 



64 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

we meet that persistent contradiction between theory 
and practice which shocks our more consistent minds. 
Just as the men of the Middle Ages tolerated a Holy 
Roman Empire which claimed universal dominion and 
often exercised only the most local and rudimentary au- 
thority, so they accepted a monarchy like that of the 
early Capetians, which claimed to rule over the whole of 
France and was limited in its actual government to a 
few farms and castles In the neighborhood of Paris. 
And just as they maintained ideals of lofty chivalry 
and rigorous asceticism far beyond the sordid reality of 
ordinary knighthood or monkhood, so the constant vio- 
lation of feudal obligations did not change the feudal 
bond or destroy the nexus of feudal relations. In this 
age of unrestraint, ferocious savagery alternated with 
knightly generosity, and ungovernable rage with self- 
abasing penance. 

At such times the relations of the king and his great 
feudatories would depend very largely upon personal 
temperament, political situations, and even the Im- 
pulse of the moment, and we must not expect to find 
such purpose and continuity in policies as prevail in 
more settled periods. Nevertheless, with due allowance 
for momentary variations, the relations of Normandy 
with the Capetian kings follow comparatively simple 
lines. The position of Normandy In the Seine valley 
and Its proximity to the royal domain offered endless 
opportunity for friction, yet for about a century strained 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 65 

relations were avoided by alliance and friendship based 
upon common interest. Hugh Capet came to the throne 
with the support of the Norman duke, and his successors 
often found their mainstay in Norman arms. Robert the 
Magnificent on his departure for the East commended 
his young son to King Henry, and the heir seems to 
have grown up under the king's guardianship. It was 
Henry who saved William from his barons in 1047, and 
it was William that furnished over half the king's sol- 
diers on the campaign against Anjou in the following 
year. Then, about the middle of the eleventh century, 
comes a change, for which the growing power and in- 
fluence of Normandy furnish a sufficient explanation. 
Henry supported the revolt of William of Arques in 
1053 and attempted a great invasion of Normandy in 
the same year, while in 1058 he burnt and pillaged his 
way into the heart of the Norman territory. A waiting 
game and well-timed attacks defeated these efforts at 
Mortemer and at Varaville, but William refused to 
follow up his advantage by a direct attack upon his 
king, whom he continued to treat with personal con- 
sideration as his feudal lord. Even after William him- 
self became king, he seems to have continued to render 
the military service which he owed as duke. By this 
time, however, the subjection had become only nominal; 
merely as duke, William was now a more powerful ruler 
than the king of France, and the Capetian monarchy 
had to bide its time for more than a century longer. 



66 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

Before we can leave the purely Norman period of 
William's reign and turn to the conquest of England, 
it is important to examine the internal condition of Nor- 
mandy under his rule. Even the most thorough study 
possible of this subject would need to be brief, for lack 
of available evidence. Time has not dealt kindly with 
Norman records, and over against the large body of 
Anglo-Saxon charters and the unique account of Anglo- 
Saxon England preserved in the Domesday survey, 
contemporary Normandy can set only a few scattered 
documents and a curious statement of the duke's rights 
and privileges under William, drawn up four years after 
his death and only recently recovered as an authority for 
his reign. The sources of Norman history were probably 
never so abundant as those of England ; certainly there is 
now nothing on the Continent, outside of the Vatican, 
that can compare with the extraordinarily full and con- 
tinuous series of the English public records. The great 
gaps in the Norman records, often supposed to be due 
to the Revolution, really appear much earlier. Un- 
doubtedly there was in many places wanton destruc- 
tion of documents in the revolutionary uprisings, and 
there were many losses under the primitive organiza- 
tion of local archives in this period, as there undoubt- 
edly were during the carelessness and corruption of the 
Restoration. Nevertheless, an examination of the copies 
and extracts made from monastic and cathedral archives 
by the scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 67 

turies shows that, with a few significant exceptions, the 
materials for early Norman history were little richer then 
than now, so that the great losses must have occurred 
before this time, that is to say, during the Middle Ages 
and in the devastation of the English invasion and of the 
Protestant wars of the sixteenth century. The cathedral 
library at Bayeux, for example, possesses three volumes 
of a huge cartulary charred by the fire into which it was 
thrown when the town was sacked by the Protestants. 
On the other hand, it should be noted that the French 
Revolution accomplished one beneficent result for local 
records in the secularization of ecclesiastical archives 
and their collection into the great repositories of the 
Archives Departementales, whose organization is still 
the envy of historical scholars across the Channel. One 
who has enjoyed for many months access to these admir- 
able collections of records will be permitted to express 
his gratitude to those who created them, as well as to 
those by whom they are now so courteously adminis- 
tered. 

Piecing together our scattered information regarding 
the Normandy of the eleventh century, we note at the 
outset that it was a feudal society, that is to say, land 
was for the most part held of a lord by hereditary tenure 
on condition of military service. Indeed feudal ideas 
had spread so far that they even penetrated the church, 
so that in some instances the revenues of the clergy 
had been granted to laymen and archdeaconries and 



68 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

prebends had been turned into hereditary fiefs. With 
feudal service went the various incidents of feudal ten- 
ure and a well-developed feudal jurisdiction of the lord 
over his tenants and of the greater barons over the less. 
In all this there is nothing to distinguish Normandy 
from the neighboring countries of northern France, and 
as a feudal society is normally a decentralized society, 
we should expect to find the powers of government 
chiefly in the hands of the local lords. A closer study, 
however, shows certain peculiarities which are of the 
utmost importance, both for Norman and for English 
history. 

First of all, the military service owing to the duke 
had been systematically assessed in rough units of five or 
ten knights, and this service, or its subdivisions, had be- 
come attached to certain pieces of land, or knights' fees. 
The amounts of service were fixed by custom and were 
regularly enforced. Still more significant are the re- 
strictions placed upon the military power of the barons. 
The symbol and the foundation of feudal authority was 
the castle, wherefore the duke forbade the building of 
castles and strongholds without his license and required 
them to be handed over to him on demand. Private war 
and the blood feud could not yet be prohibited entirely, 
but they were closely limited. No one was allowed to go 
out to seek his enemy with hauberk and standard and 
sounding horn. Assaults and ambushes were not per- 
mitted in the duke's forests; captives were not to be 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND . 69 

taken in a feud, nor could arms, horses, or property be 
carried off from a combat. Burning, plunder, and waste 
were forbidden in pursuing claims to land, and except 
for open crime, no one could be condemned to loss of 
limb unless by judgment of the proper ducal or baro- 
nial court. Coinage, generally a valued privilege of the 
greater lords, was in Normandy a monopoly of the duke. 
What the absence of such restrictions might mean is 
well illustrated in England in the reign of Stephen, when 
private war, unlicensed castles, and baronial coinage 
appeared as the chief evils of an unbridled feudal 
anarchy. 

In the administration of justice, in spite of the great 
franchises of the barons, the duke has a large reserved 
jurisdiction. Certain places are under his special pro- 
tection, certain crimes put the offender at his mercy. 
The administrative machinery, though in many respects 
still primitive, has kept pace with the duke's authority. 
Whereas the Capetian king has as his local representa- 
tives only the semi-feudal agents on his farms, the Nor- 
man duke has for purposes of local government a real 
public officer, the vicomte, commanding his troops, guard- 
ing his castles, maintaining order, administering jus- 
tice, and collecting the ducal revenues. Nowhere is the 
superiority of the Norman dukes over their royal over- 
lords more clear than in the matter of finance. The house- 
keeping of the Capetian king of the eleventh century was 
still what the Germans call a Naturalwirthschaft, an 



70 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

economic organization based upon payment in produce 
and labor rather than in money. "Less powerful than 
certain of his great vassals," as he is described by his 
principal historian, Luchaire,^ "the king lives like them 
from the income from his farms and tolls, the payments 
of his peasants, the labor of his serfs, the taxes disguised 
as gifts which he levies from the bishops and abbots of 
the neighborhood. His granaries of Gonesse, Janville, 
Mantes, Etampes, furnish his grain; his cellars of Or- 
leans and Argenteuil, his wine; his forests of Rouvrai 
(now the Bois de Boulogne), Saint-Germain, Fontaine- 
bleau, Iveline, Compiegne, his game. He passes his time 
in hunting, for amusement or to supply his table, and 
travels constantly from estate to estate, from abbey to 
abbey, obliged to make full use of his rights of enter- 
tainment and to move, frequently from place to place in 
order not to exhaust the resources of his subjects." 

In other words, under existing methods of communica- 
tion, it was easier to transport the king and his house- 
hold than it was to transport food, and the king literally 
'boarded round' from farm to farm. Such conditions 
were typical of the age, and they could only be changed 
by the development of a revenue in money, enabling the 
king to buy where he would and to pay whom he would 
for service, whether personal or political or military. 
Only by hard cash could the mediaeval ruler become 

^ Luchaire, Les quatre premiers Capetiens, in Lavisse, Histoire de France 
(Paris, 1901), II, 2, p. 176. 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 71 

independent of the limitations which feudalism placed 
upon him. Now, while the Norman duke derived much 
of his income from his farms and forests, his mills and 
fishing rights and local monopolies and tolls, he had also 
a considerable revenue in money. Each vicomte was 
farmed for a fixed amount, and there was probably a 
regular method of collection and accounting. If the king 
wished to bestow revenue upon a monastery he would 
grant so many measures of grain at the mills of Bourges 
or so many measures of wine in the vineyards of Joui; 
while in a similar position the Norman duke would give 
money — twelve pounds in the farm of Argentan, sixty 
shillings and tenpence in the toll of Exmes, or one hun- 
dred shillings in the prevote of Caen. Nothing could show 
more clearly the superiority of Normandy in fiscal and 
hence in political organization, where under the forms 
of feudalism we can already discern the beginnings of the 
modern state. 

To William's authority in the state we must add his 
control over the Norman church. Profoundly secularized 
and almost absorbed into the lay society about it as a 
result of the Norse invasion, the Norman church had 
been renewed and refreshed by the wave of monastic 
reform which swept over western Europe in the first 
half of the eleventh century, and now occupied both 
spiritually and intellectually a position of honor and of 
strength. But it was not supreme. The duke appointed 
its bishops and most of its abbots, sat in its provincial 



72 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

councils, and revised the judgments of its courts. Liberal 
in gifts to the church and punctilious in his religious 
observances, William left no doubt who was master, 
and his respectful but independent attitude toward 
the Papacy already foreshadowed the conflict in which 
he forced even the mighty Hildebrand to yield. 

I have dwelt at some length upon these matters of 
internal organization, not only because they are fun- 
damental to an understanding of many institutions of 
the Norman empire, but because they also serve to ex- 
plain how there came to be a Norman empire. The con- 
quest of England has been so uniformly approached 
from the English point of view that it is often made to 
appear as more or less of an accident arising from a 
casual invasion of freebooters. Viewed in its proper per- 
spective, which I venture to think is the Norman per- 
spective, it appears as a natural outgrowth of Norman 
discipline and of Norman expansion. Only because the 
duke was strong at home could he hope to be strong 
abroad, only because he was master of an extraordi- 
narily vigorous, coherent, and well-organized state in 
Normandy could he attempt the at first sight impossible 
task of conquering a kingdom and the still greater task of 
organizing it under a firm government. We must take 
account, not only of the weakness of England, but also 
of the strength of Normandy, stronger than any of its 
continental neighbors, stronger even than royalty itself. 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 73 

That the expansion of Normandy should be directed 
toward England was the result, not only of the special 
conditions of the year 1066, but of a steady rapproche- 
ment between the two countries, In which the active ef- 
fort was exerted from the Norman side. By geographi- 
cal position, by the Scandinavian settlement of both 
countries, and by the commercial enterprise of the mer- 
chants of Rouen, the history of Normandy and Eng- 
land had In various ways been brought together In the 
tenth century, till In 1002 the marriage of the English 
king Ethelred with Emma, sister of Duke Richard the 
Good, created dynastic connections of far-reaching Im- 
portance. Their son Edward the Confessor was brought 
up at the Norman court, so that his habits and sympa- 
thies became Norman rather than English, and his ac- 
cession to the English throne in 1042 opened the way 
to a rapid development of Norman influence both in 
church and in state, which Freeman, with his strong 
anti-foreign feelings, considered the real beginning of 
the Norman Conquest. As Edward's childless reign 
drew near Its end, there were two principal claimants 
for the succession, Harold, son of Godwin, the most 
powerful earl of England, and Duke William. Harold 
could make no hereditary claim to the throne, nor until 
the eve of Edward's death does he seem to have had the 
king's support, but he was a man of strength and force 
and was clearly the leading man of the kingdom. Wil- 
liam, as the great-nephew of Ethelred and Emma, was 



74 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

cousin (first cousin once removed) of Edward, a claim 
which he strengthened by an early expression of Edward 
in his favor and by an oath which he had exacted from 
Harold to support his candidacy. The exact facts are 
not known regarding Harold's oath, made during an 
involuntary visit to Normandy two or three years be- 
fore, but it enabled William to pose as the defender of a 
broken obligation and gave him the great moral ad- 
vantage of the support of Pope Alexander II, to whom 
he had the question submitted. At Edward's death 
Harold had himself chosen by the witan, or national 
council, and crowned, so that he had on his side what- 
ever could come from such legal forms and from the sup- 
port which lay behind them. We must not, however, 
commit the anachronism of thinking that he was a na- 
tional hero or even the candidate of a national party. 
There was in the eleventh century no such thing as a 
nation in the sense that the term Is understood in the 
modern world, and the word could least of all be ap- 
plied to England, broken, divided, and harried by Dan- 
ish invasions and by internal disunion. Even the notion 
of the foreigner was still dim and inchoate, and the 
reign of Canute, to cite no others, had shown England 
that she had nothing to fear from a king of foreign 
birth. The contest between Harold, who was half- 
Danish In blood, and William, big as It was In national 
consequences, cannot be elevated to the rank of a na- 
tional struggle. 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 75 

From the death of Edward the Confessor and the 
coronation of Harold, in January, 1066, until the cross- 
ing of the Channel in September, William was busy with 
preparations for the invasion of England. Such an ex- 
pedition transcended the obligation of military service 
which could be demanded from his feudal vassals, and 
William was obliged to make a strong appeal to the Nor- 
man love of adventure and feats of arms and to promise 
wide lands and rich booty from his future conquests. 
He also found it necessary to enlist knights from other 
parts of France — Brittany, Flanders, Poitou, even 
adventurers from distant Spain and Sicily. And then 
there was the question of transport, for Normandy had 
no fleet and it was no small matter to create in six 
months the seven hundred boats which William's kins- 
men and vassals obligated themselves to provide. All 
were ready by the end of August at the mouth of the 
Dives, — as the quaint Hotel Guillaume-le-Conqu6rant 
reminds the American visitor, — but mediaeval sailors 
could not tack against the wind, and six weeks were 
passed in waiting for a favoring breeze. Finally it was 
decided to take advantage of a west wind as far as the 
mouth of the Somme, and here at Saint- Valery the 
fleet assembled for the final crossing. Late in Septem- 
ber the Normans landed on the beach at Pevensey 
and marched to Hastings, where, October 15, they met 
the troops of Harold, fresh from their great victory 
over the men of Norway at Stamfordbridge. 



76 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

Few battles of the Middle Ages were of importance 
equal to that of Hastings, and few are better known. 
Besides the prose accounts of the Latin chroniclers, 
we have the contemporary elegiacs of Guy of Amiens 
and Baudri of Bourgueil, the spirited verse of the 
Roman de Ron of Master Wace, the most detailed 
narrative but written, unfortunately, a century after 
the event, and the unique and vivid portrayal of the 
Bayeux Tapestry. This remarkable monument, which 
is accessible to all in a variety of editions, consists of a 
roll of cloth two hundred and thirty feet long and 
twenty inches in breadth, embroidered in colors with 
a series of seventy-nine scenes which narrate the his- 
tory of the Conquest from the departure of Harold on 
the ill-fated journey which led him to William's court 
down to the final discomfiture of the English army on 
the field of Hastings. The episodes, which are desig- 
nated by brief titles, are well chosen and are executed 
with a realism of detail which is of the greatest impor- 
tance for the life and culture of the age. Preserved in 
the cathedral and later in the municipal Museum of 
Bayeux — save for a notable interval in 1804, when Na- 
poleon had it exhibited in Paris to arouse enthusiasm 
for a new French conquest of England, — the tapestry 
appears from internal evidence to have been originally 
executed as an ornament for this cathedral by English 
workmen at the command of Bishop Odo, half-brother 
of the Conqueror. There is no basis for the common be- 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 77 

lief that it was the work of Queen Matilda or her ladies, 
but efforts to place it one or even two centuries later 
have proved unavailing against the evidence of armor 
and costume, and the general opinion of scholars now 
regards it as belonging to the eleventh century and thus 
substantially contemporary with the events which it 
depicts. 

The modern literature of the battle is also commensur- 
ate with its importance. The classic account is found in 
the third volume of Freeman's majestic History of the 
Norman Conquest, where the story is told with a rare 
combination of minute detail and spirited narrative 
which reminds us, it has been said, of a battle of the Iliad 
or a Norse saga. Splendid as this narrative is, its enthu- 
siasm often carries it beyond the evidence of the sources, 
and in several fundamental points it can no longer be 
accepted as historically sound. The theory of the pali- 
sade upon which Freeman's conception of the English 
tactics rested has been destroyed by the trenchant criti- 
cism of that profound student of Anglo-Norman history, 
J. Horace Round, and his whole treatment has been 
vigorously attacked from the point of view of the scien- 
tific study of military history by Wilhelm Spatz and his 
distinguished master, Hans Delbriick, of Berlin. Un- 
fortunately the Berlin critics are influenced too much by 
certain theories of military organization; they do not 
call the English soldier of the period a degenerate, but 
they consider him, and the Norman knight as well, in- 



78 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

capable of the disciplined and united action required 
by all real strategy, incapable even of forming the 
shield-wall and executing the feigned flight described 
by the contemporary chroniclers of the battle. While 
it is true that mediaeval fighting was far more individual- 
istic than that of ancient or modern armies and lacked 
also the flexible conditions which lie at the basis of 
modern tactics, there is the best of contemporary evi- 
dence for a certain amount of strategical movement at 
Hastings. On one point, however, the modern mili- 
tary critics have compelled us to modify our ideas of 
the battles of earlier times, namely, with respect to the 
numbers engaged. Against the constant tendency to 
magnify the size of the military forces, a tendency ac- 
centuated in the Middle Ages by the complete reck- 
lessness of chroniclers when dealing with large figures, 
modern criticism has pointed out the limitations of 
battle-space, transportation, and commissariat. The 
five millions with which Xerxes is said to have invaded 
Greece are a physical impossibility, for Delbriick has 
shown that, with this number moving under normal 
conditions, the rear-guard could not have crossed the 
Tigris when the first Persians reached Thermopylae. 
Similarly the fifty or sixty thousand knights attributed 
to William the Conqueror shrink to one-tenth the num- 
ber when brought to face with the oiificial lists of Eng- 
lish and Norman knights' fees. If William's army did 
not exceed five or six thousand, that of Harold could 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 79 

not have been much greater and may well have been 
less; though William's panegyrist places the number of 
English at 1,200,000, not more than 12,000 could have 
stood, in the closest formation, on the hill which they 
occupied at Hastings. Small skirmishes these, to those 
who have followed the battles of the Marne, the Aisne, 
the Vistula, and the San, yet none the less important 
in the world's history! 

In spite of all the controversy, the main lines of the 
battle seem fairly clear. The troops of Harold occupied 
a well-defended hill eight miles inland from Hastings on 
the London road, the professional guard of housecarles 
in front, protected by the solid wall of their shields and 
supported by the thegns and other fully armed troops, 
the levies of the countryside behind or at the sides, 
armed with javelins, stone clubs, and farmers' weapons. 
They had few archers and no cavalry, but the steep hill 
was well protected from the assaults of the Norman horse 
and favored the firm defence which the English tactics 
dictated. The Norman lines consisted first of archers, 
then of heavy-armed foot-soldiers, and finally of the 
mailed horsemen, their centre grouped about William 
and the standard which he had received from the Pope. 
After a preliminary attack by the archers and foot, the 
knights came forward, preceded by the minstrel Taille- 
fer, "a jongleur whom a very brave heart ennobled," 
qui mult bien chantout, throwing his sword in the air 
and catching it as he sang — ■ 



8o NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

De Karlemaigne e de Rollant Of Roland and of Charlemagne, 
E d'Oliver e des vassals Oliver and the vassals all 

Qui morurent en Rencevals. Who fell in fight at Roncevals. 

But the horses recoiled from the hill, pursued by many 
of the English, and only the sight of William, his head 
bared of its helmet so as to be seen by his men, rallied 
the knights again. The mass of the English stood firm 
behind their shield-wall and their line could be broken 
only by the ruse of a feigned flight, from which the Nor- 
mans turned to surround and cut to pieces their pur- 
suers. Even then the housecarles were unmoved, until 
the arrows of the high-shooting Norman bowmen fin- 
ally opened up the gaps in their ranks into which Wil- 
liam's horsemen pressed against the battle-axes of the 
king's guard. And then, as darkness began to fall, Har- 
old was mortally wounded by an arrow, the guard was 
cut to pieces, and the remnant fled. "Here Harold was 
killed and the English turned to flight" is the final head- 
ing in the Bayeux Tapestry, while in the margin the 
spoilers strip the coats of mail from the dead and drive 
off the horses of the slain knights. 

"A single battle settled the fate of England." There 
was still grim work to be done — the humbling of Exe- 
ter, the harrying of Northumberland, the subjection 
of the earls, but these were only local episodes. There 
was no one but William who could effectively take 
Harold's place, and when on Christmas Day he had 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 8i 

been crowned at London, he could reduce opposition at 
his leisure. The chronicle of these later years belongs 
to English rather than to Norman history. 

The results of the Conquest, too, are of chief signifi- 
cance for the conquered. For the Normans the immedi- 
ate effect was a great opportunity for expansion in every 
department of life. There was work for the warrior in 
completing the subjugation of the land, for the organ- 
izer and statesman in the new adjustments of central and 
local government, for the prelate in bringing his new 
diocese into line with the practice of the church on the 
Continent, for the monks to found new priories and 
administer the new lands which their monasteries now 
received beyond the Channel. The Norman townsman 
and the Norman merchant followed hard upon the 
Norman armies, in the Norman colony in London, in 
the traders of the ports, in the boroughs of the western 
border. In part, of course, the change was simply the 
replacing of one set of persons by another, putting a 
Norman archbishop in place of Stigand at Canterbury, 
spreading over the map the Montgomeries and Percies, 
the Mowbrays and the Mortimers and scores of other 
household names of English history; but it was also a 
work of readjustment and reorganization which required 
all the Norman gift for constructive work. A certain 
elan passes through Norman life and reflects itself in 
Norman literature, as the Normans become more con- 
scious of the glory of their achievements and the great- 



82 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

ness of their new empire. England had become an ap- 
pendage to Normandy, and men did not yet see that 
the relation would soon be reversed. 

For England, the Norman Conquest determined per- 
manently the orientation of English politics and Eng- 
lish culture. Geographically belonging, with the Scandi- 
navian countries, to the outlying lands of Europe, the 
British Isles had been in serious danger of sharing their 
remoteness from the general movements of European 
life and drifting into the back waters of history. The 
union with Normandy turned England southward and 
brought it at once into the full current of European 
affairs — political entanglements, ecclesiastical connec- 
tions, cultural influences. England became a part of 
France and thus entered fully into the life of the 
world to which France belonged. It received the speech 
of France, the literature of France, and the art of 
France; its law became in large measure Frankish, its 
institutions more completely feudal. Yet the connec- 
tion with France ran through Normandy, and the 
French influence took on Norman forms. Most of all was 
this true in the field in which the Norman excelled, that 
of government: English feudalism was Norman feu- 
dalism, in which the barons were weak and the central 
power strong, and it was the heavy hand of Norman 
kingship that turned the loose and disintegrating An- 
glo-Saxon state into the English nation. England was 
Europeanized only at the price of being Normanized. 



NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 83 

From the point of view both of immediate achieve- 
ment and of ultimate results, the conquest of England 
was the crowning act of Norman history. Something 
doubtless was due to good fortune, — to the absence of an 
English fleet, to the favorable opportunity in French 
politics, to the mistakes of the English. But the funda- 
mental facts, without which these would have meant 
nothing, were the strength and discipline of Normandy 
and the personality of her leader. Diplomat, warrior, 
leader of men, William was preeminently a statesman, 
and it was his organizing genius which " turned the de- 
feat of English arms into the making of the English na- 
tion." This talent for political organization was, how- 
ever, no isolated endowment of the Norman duke, but 
was shared in large measure by the Norman barons, as is 
abundantly shown by the history of Norman rule in 
Italy and Sicily. For William and for his followers the 
conquest of England only gave a wider field for qualities 
of state-building which had already shown themselves 
in Normandy. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

A detailed narrative of the relations between Normandy and Eng- 
land in the eleventh century is given by E. A. Freeman in his History 
of the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1870-79), but large portions of this 
work need to be rewritten in the light of later studies, especially those 
of Round. There is a brief biography of William the Conqueror by 
Freeman in the series of "Twelve English Statesmen" (London, 
1888), and a fuller one by F. M. Stenton in the "Heroes of the Na- 
tions" (1908). For the institutions of Normandy see my articles on 



84 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

"Knight Service in Normandy in the Eleventh Century," in English 
Historical Review, xxii, pp. 636-49; "The Norman ' Consuetudines 
et lusticie' of William the Conqueror," ibid, xxiil, pp. 502-08; and 
" Normandy under William the Conqueror," in American Historical 
Review, xiv, pp. 453-76 (1909) ; also L. Valin, Le due de Normandie et 
sa cour, gi2-i204 (Paris, 1910). For church and state, see H. Bohmer, 
Kirche und Staat in England und in der Normandie (Leipzig, 1899). 
The dealings of the Norman dukes with their continental neighbors 
are narrated by A. Fliche, Le rhgne de Philippe I"" roi de France 
(Paris, 1912) ; L. Halphen,Le comte d'Anjou auXP siecle (Paris, 1906) ; 
R. Latouche, Histoire du comte du Maine pendant le X" et le XI' siecle 
(Paris, 1910); F. Lot, Fideles ou vassaux (Paris, 1904), ch. 6 (on the 
feudal relations of the Norman dukes and the French kings). There 
is a good sketch of France in the eleventh century by Luchaire in 
the Histoire de France of Lavisse, ii, part 2; a fuller work on this 
period is expected from Maurice Prou. For the literature of the battle 
of Hastings, see Gross, Sources and Literature, nos. 707a, 2812, 2998- 
3000; the most important works are those of Round, Spatz, and Del- 
briick, Geschichte der Kriegskunst, ill, pp. 147-62 (1907). The Bayeux 
Tapestry is most conveniently accessible in the small edition of F. R. 
Fowke (reprinted, London, 1913); see also Gross, no. 2139, and Ph. 
Lauer, in Melanges Charles Bemont (Paris, 1913), pp. 43-58. Freeman 
discusses the results of the Conquest in his fifth volume; see also 
Gaston Paris, V esprit norniand en Angleterre, in La poesie du moyen 
dge, second series (Paris, 1895), pp. 45-74. 



IV 

THE NORMAN EMPIRE 

THE lecture upon Normandy and England 
sought to place in their Norman perspective 
the events leading to the Norman Conquest and 
to show how that decisive triumph of Norman strength 
and daring was made possible by the development of an 
exceptional ducal authority in Normandy and Maine 
and by the personal greatness of William the Conqueror. 
We now come to follow still further this process of ex- 
pansion, to the Scotch border, to Ireland, to the Pyre- 
nees, until the empire of the Plantagenet kings became 
the chief political fact in western Europe. The Norman 
empire is the outstanding feature of the twelfth century, 
as the conquest of England was of the eleventh. 

This great imperial state is commonly known, not as 
the Norman, but as the Angevin, empire, because its 
rulers, Henry II, Richard, and John, were descended in 
the male line from the counts of Anjou. The phrase is, 
however, a misnomer, since it leads one to suppose that 
the Angevin counts were its creators, which is in no sense 
the case. The centre of the empire was Normandy, its 
founders were the Norman dukes. The marriage of the 
Princess Matilda to Count Geoffrey Plantagenet added 



86 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

Anjou to Normandy rather than Normandy to Anjou, 
and it was as duke of Normandy that their son Henry 
II began his political career. The extension of his do- 
mains southward by marriage only gave Normandy 
the central position in his realm, and it was the loss 
of Normandy under John which led to the empire's 
collapse. 

Against the application of the term ' empire ' to the do- 
minion of Henry II more cogent reasons may be urged. 
It rests, so far as I know, upon no contemporary au- 
thority, and even if the phrase could be found by some 
chance in a writer of the twelfth century, it would carry 
with it no weight. Western Europe in the Middle Ages 
knew but one empire, the Holy Roman Empire of the 
German Nation — from one point of view neither holy 
nor Roman nor an empire, as Voltaire long afterward 
remarked, yet, as revived by Charlemagne and Otto the 
Great, representing to the mind of the Middle Ages 
the idea of universal monarchy which they had inherited 
from ancient Rome. To the men of the twelfth century 
the emperor was Frederick Barbarossa ; he could not be 
Henry II. Nor will the government of the Norman-An- 
gevin ruler square with the modern definition of an em- 
pire as "a state formed by the rule of one state over 
other states." ^ His various dominions, if we except 
Ireland, were not dependencies of England, or Anjou, 
or Normandy. King in England, duke in Normandy, 

* W. S. Ferguson, Greek Imperialism, p. i. 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE 87 

count in Anjou and Maine, duke again in Aquitaine, 
Henry ruled each of his dominions as its feudal lord — 
very much as if the German Emperor to-day combined 
in himself the titles of king of Prussia and of Bavaria, 
grand duke of Baden, duke of Brunswick, prince of 
Waldeck, and so on throughout the members of the 
German confederation. Such a government is not an 
empire in the sense of the ancient Roman or the modern 
British empires, for it has no dependencies. It is an 
empire only in the broader and looser sense of the word, 
a great composite state, larger than a mere kingdom and 
imperial in extent if not in organization. 

That Henry's realm was in extent imperial can easily 
be seen from the map. It extended from Scotland to the 
frontier of Spain, as the empire of his contemporary 
Frederick I extended from the Baltic and the North Sea 
to central Italy. And if the kingdoms of Germany, 
Italy, and Burgundy which made up Frederick's empire 
covered in the aggregate more territory, the actual au- 
thority of the ruler, whether in army, justice, or finance, 
was decidedly less than in the Anglo-Norman state. 
Henry had a stronger army, a larger revenue, a more 
centralized government. Moreover, the Norman empire 
was less artificial than it seems to us at first sight, accus- 
tomed as we are to the associations of the modern map. 
There was, especially with mediaeval methods of com- 
munication, nothing anomalous in a state which strad- 
dled the English Channel: Normandy was nearer Eng- 



88 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

land than was Ireland ; it was quite as easy to go from 
London to Rouen as from London to York. The geo- 
graphical bonds were also strong between Henry's con- 
tinental dominions, for the roads of the twelfth century 
did not radiate from Paris, but followed mainly the old 
Roman lines, and from Rouen there was direct and 
easy connection with LeMans, Tours, Poitiers, and Bor- 
deaux. In the matter of race, too, we must beware of 
being misled by our modern ideas. The English nation 
was at most only the vaguest sort of a conception, the 
French nation did not exist till the fifteenth century, and 
personal loyalty to the lord of many diiTerent lands was 
a natural expression of the conditions of the age. It is 
contrary to our prejudices that a single state should be 
formed out of the hard-headed Norman, the Celtic fish- 
erman of the Breton coast, — the ' Pecheur d'Islande' 
of a later day, — the Angevin, Tourangeau, Poitevin, 
the troubadour of Aquitalne, and the Gascon of the far 
south, with his alien blood and non-Aryan language, al- 
ready a well-marked type whose swaggering gasconades 
foreshadow the d'Artagnan of the Three Musketeers and 
the ' cadets de Gascogne ' of Cyrano de Bergerac. But it 
was little harder to rule these diverse lands from London 
or Rouen than from Paris; it was for the time being as 
easy to make them part of a Norman empire as of a 
French kingdom. Over the various languages and dia- 
lects ran the Latin of law and government and the French 
of the court and of affairs; while in political matters 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE 89 

these countries were, as we shall see, quite capable of 
united action. 

Let us call to mind how the empire of Henry H was 
formed. At the death of the Conqueror in 1087 the 
lands which he had brought together and ruled with 
such good peace were divided between his two eldest 
sons, Robert receiving Normandy and William the Red, 
England. Save for William's regency over Normandy 
during his brother's absence on the Crusade, the two 
countries remained separate during his reign, and were 
united once more only in 1 106 when William's successor, 
his younger brother Henry I, after defeating and depos- 
ing Robert at Tinchebrai, ruled as duke of Normandy 
and king of England. This was the inheritance which, 
after the death of Prince William in the White Ship, 
Henry sought to hand down to his daughter Matilda, 
but which passed for the most part to his nephew 
Stephen of Blols. Stephen, however, never gained a firm 
hold in England and soon lost Normandy to Matilda's 
husband, Count Geoffrey of Anjou, by whom it was con- 
quered and ruled in the name of his son Henry, later 
Henry H. Crowned duke of Normandy in 11 50, Henry 
succeeded his father as count of Anjou in the following 
year, and at Stephen's death in 1154 became king of 
England. Meanwhile, in 1152, he had contracted a 
marriage of the greatest political importance with 
Eleanor, duchess of Aquitaine, whose union with the 
French king Louis VH had just been annulled by the 



90 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

Pope; an alliance which made him master of Poitou, 
Aquitaine, and Gascony and therewith of two-thirds 
of France. Apart from certain adjustments in central 
France, the only addition to these territories made dur- 
ing Henry's reign was the conquest of eastern Ireland 
in the years following 1169. Into these Irish campaigns 
and their consequences for the whole later history of the 
island we cannot attempt to go. Let me only point out 
that the leading spirits were Norman, except so far as 
they were Irish exiles, and that the names which now 
make their appearance in Irish annals are Norman 
names — the Lacys and the Clares, the Fitzgeralds and 
the de Courcys, as Irish before long as the Irish them- 
selves. 

Substantially, then, the empire of Henry II remained 
in extent as he found it at his accession to the English 
throne at the age of twenty-one; it was not created by 
him but inherited or annexed by marriage. Accordingly 
it is not as a conqueror but as a ruler that he can lay 
claim to greatness. But although Henry attempted little 
in the way of acquiring new territory, he did much to 
consolidate his possessions and to extend his European 
power and influence. His daughters were married to 
the greatest princes of their time, Henry the Lion, duke 
of Saxony and Bavaria, King Alphonso VIII of Castile, 
King William II of Sicily. He made an alliance with the 
ruler of Provence and planned a marriage with the house 
of Savoy that would have given him control of the passes 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE 91 

into Italy. He took his part in the struggle of Pope and 
anti-Pope, of Pope and Emperor; he corresponded with 
the emperor of Constantinople, refused the crown of the 
kingdom of Jerusalem, and died on the eve of his de- 
parture on a crusade. No one could lay claim to greater 
influence upon the international affairs of his time. 

Occupying this international position, Henry must 
not be viewed, as he generally is, merely as an English 
king. He was born and educated on the Continent, 
began to reign on the Continent, and spent a large part 
of his life in his continental dominions. He ruled more 
territory outside of England than in, and his continental 
lands had at least as large a place as England in his 
policy. It is perhaps too much to say, in modern phrase, 
that he 'thought imperially,' but he certainly did not 
think nationally ; and when his latest biographer speaks 
of Henry's continental campaigns as "foreign affairs," ^ 
he is thinking insularly, for Normandy, Anjou, Gascony 
even, were no more foreign than England itself. Henry 
is not a national figure, either English or French; he is 
international, if not cosmopolitan. Only from the point 
of view of later times can we associate him peculiarly 
with English history, when after the collapse of the Nor- 
man empire under his sons, the permanent influence of 
his work continued to be felt most fully in England. 

^ Salzmann, Henry II, where the continental aspects of Henry's reign 
are dismissed in a brief chapter on "foreign affairs." The heading would 
be more appropriate to the account of Henry's campaigns in Ireland. 



92 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

Both as a man and as a ruler, the figure of Henry II 
has come down to us distorted by the loves and hates 
of an age of the most violent and bitter controversy. 
Brilliant though scarcely heroic to his friends, to his 
enemies he was a veritable demon of tyranny and 
crime, whose lurid end pointed many a moral respecting 
the sins of princes and the vengeance of the Most High. 
Eminently a strong man, he was not regarded as in any 
sense superhuman, but rather as an intensely human 
figure, tempted in all points like as other men and yield- 
ing where they yielded. Heavy, bull-necked, sensual, 
with a square jaw, freckled face, reddish hair, and fiery 
eyes that blazed in sudden paroxysms of anger, he must, 
in Bishop Stubbs's phrase, "have looked generally like 
a rough, passionate, uneasy man." ^ The dominant 
impression is one of exhaustless energy accompanied 
by a physical restlessness which kept him whispering 
and scribbling during mass, hunting and hawking from 
morning to night, and riding constantly from place to 
place throughout his vast dominions with a rapidity 
that always took his enemies by surprise. On one occa- 
sion he covered one hundred and seventy miles in two 
days. Well-educated for a prince of his time and able 
to hold his own in ready converse with the clerks of his 
court, his tastes were neither speculative nor romantic, 
but were early turned toward practical life. He was pri- 
marily "an able, plausible, astute, cautious, unprincipled 

^ Benedict of Peterborough, ii, p. xxxiii. 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE 93 

man of business," ^ fond of work and delighting in detail, 
with a distinct gift for organization and a mastery of 
diplomacy, wise in the selection of his subordinates, 
skilful in evasion, but quick and sure in action. Strong, 
clear-headed, and tenacious, Henry represents the type 
of the man of large affairs, and in another age might have 
amassed a large private fortune as a successful business 
man. In the twelfth century the chief opportunity for 
talent of this sort was in public life, where the king's 
household was also the government of the state, the 
strengthening of royal authority was the surest means 
of attaining national unity and security, and the inter- 
est of the king coincided with the Interest of the state. 
To the present day, with its cry for business men in 
public office, this seems natural enough; but we must 
remember that feudalism meant exactly the opposite 
of business efficiency, and that the problem of creating 
an effective government in the midst of a feudal society 
turned largely on the maintenance of a businesslike 
administration of justice, finance, and the army. By 
his success In these fields Henry went a long way 
toward creating a modern state, and did, as a matter 
of fact, establish the most highly organized and effective 
government of its time in western Europe. 

Our conceptions of the nature of Henry II's public 
work have been in certain respects modified as the result 
of modern research. It has become clear, in the first 

1 Benedict of Peterborough, ii, p. xxxi. 



94 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

place, that he was an administrator rather than a legis- 
lator, and that such of his legislation as has reached us 
belongs in the category of instructions to his officers 
rather than in that of general enactments. These meas- 
ures lack the permanence of statutes ; they are supple- 
mented, modified, withdrawn, in accordance with the 
will of a sovereign whose restless temper showed itself 
in a constant series of legal and administrative experi- 
ments. Many of his changes seem to have been effected 
through oral command rather than written instructions. 
In the second place, Henry's originality has been some- 
what diminished by a more careful study of the work of 
his predecessors, notably of Henry I, in whose reign it 
is now possible to trace at work some of the elements 
that were once supposed to have been innovations of 
his grandson. As a whole, however, the work of 
Henry II stands the test of analysis and gives him an 
eminent place in the number of mediaeval statesmen. 

Precocious in many ways as was the political organi- 
zation of Henry's dominions, it was conditioned by the 
circumstances of its time, and we must be careful to 
conceive it in terms of the twelfth century and not of the 
fifteenth or the twentieth. The Norman sovereign had 
at his disposal none of the legal or bureaucratic tradi- 
tions which were still maintained at Constantinople and 
were not without their influence upon the Norman 
kingdom of Sicily. Nor was the time ripe for the creation 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE 95 

out of hand of a strong central government for his va- 
rious territories, such as became possible in the Burgun- 
dian state of the fifteenth century and in the Austrian 
state which was modelled upon it. Henry was in the 
midst of a feudal society and had to make the best of it. 
He had to reckon with the particularistic traditions of 
his several dominions as well as with the feudal oppo- 
sition to strong government, and western Europe was 
still a long way from the economic conditions which lie 
at the basis of modern bureaucracies. 

When we speak of the Anglo-Norman or the Angevin 
empire, we must accordingly dismiss from our minds 
at the outset any notion of a government with a capi- 
tal, a central treasury and judicature, and a common 
assembly. A fixed central treasury existed only in the 
most advanced of the individual states, and it was 
many years before the courts established themselves 
permanently at Westminster and Rouen. Government 
was still something personal, centring in the person of 
the sovereign, and the ministers of the state were still 
his household servants. The king had no fixed residence, 
and as he moved from place to place, his household 
and its officers moved with him. Indeed kings were just 
beginning to learn that it was safer to leave their treas- 
ure in some strong castle than to carry it about in their 
wanderings; it was not till 1194 that the capture of his 
baggage train by Richard the Lion-Hearted taught the 
French king Philip Augustus to leave his money and his 



96 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

title-deeds at Paris when he went on a military expedi- 
tion. We must not be surprised to find that the principal 
common element in Henry's empire was Henry himself, 
supplemented by his most immediate household officers, 
and that many of these officers, such as the seneschals 
and the justiciars, were limited in their functions to 
England or Normandy or Anjou, and usually remained 
in their particular country to look after affairs in the 
king's absence. There was, however, one notable excep- 
tion, the chancellor, or royal secretary. Regularly an 
ecclesiastic, so that there was no chance of his turning 
the office into an hereditary fief, the nature of the chan- 
cellor's duties attached him continuously to the person 
of the sovereign and made him the natural companion 
of the royal journeys. He was far, however, from being 
a mere private secretary or amanuensis, but stood at 
the head of a regular secretarial bureau, which had its 
clerks and chaplains and its well-organized system of 
looking after the king's business. The study of the his- 
tory of institutions goes to show that, on the whole, there 
is no better test of the strength or weakness of a me- 
diaeval government than its chancery. If It had no chan- 
cery, as was the case under the early Norman dukes, 
or If Its methods, as seen in its formal acts, were irregu- 
lar and unbusinesslike, as under Robert Curthose, there 
was sure to be a lack of organization and continuity in 
its general conduct of affairs. If, on the other hand, the 
chancery was well organized, its rules and practices 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE 97 

regularly observed, its documents clear and sharp and to 
the point, this meant normally that an efficient govern- 
ment stood behind it. 

Now, judged by the most exacting standards, the 
chancery of Henry H had reached a high degree of per- 
fection. It has quite recently been the subject of an 
elaborate study by the most eminent medisevalist of 
our time, the late Leopold Delisle, who cannot restrain 
his admiration for its regularity, its accuracy and finish, 
and the extraordinary range and rapidity of its work. 
The documents issued in the name of Henry II during 
his long reign of thirty-five years, says Delisle,^ "both 
for his English and his continental possessions, are all 
drawn up on the same plan in identical formulae and ex- 
pressed with irreproachable precision in a simple, clear, 
and correct style, which is also remarkably uniform 
save for a small number of pieces which show the hand 
of others than the royal officers." If the judgment of 
this master required support, I should be glad to confirm 
it from the personal examination of some hundreds of 
Henry's charters and writs. Such uniformity, it should 
be observed, is evidence not only of the extent and tech- 
nical attainments of the chancery but of substantially 
similar administrative conditions throughout the vari- 
ous dominions to which these documents are addressed : 
officers, functions, legal and administrative procedure 
are everywhere very much alike. Moreover, a study of 
* Recueil des actes de Henri II, Introduction, p. i; cf. p. 151. 



98 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

these charters reveals another fact of fundamental im- 
portance. Even more significant than uniformity of 
procedure in a chancery is the type of document issued, 
for since the strength of government lies not in legisla- 
tion but in administration, a sure index of a state's 
efficiency will be found in the extent and character of 
its administrative correspondence. This test places the 
Norman empire far in advance of any of its contempo- 
raries. Every payment from the treasury, every allow- 
ance of an account, every summons to the army, every 
executive command or prohibition, was made by formal 
royal writ — per breve regis, as we read page after page in 
the account rolls. Of the many thousands of such writs 
issued in Henry's reign, exceedingly few have come down 
to us, but no one can read these, terse, direct, trained 
down to bone and muscle, without realizing the keen 
minds and the clear-cut administrative methods which 
they represent. Take an example: ^ 

H. Dei gratia rex Anglorum et dux Normannorum et 
Aquitanorum et comes Andegavorum R. thesaurario et 
Willelmo Malduit et Warino filio Giroldi camerariis suis 
salutem. 

Liberate de thesauro meo xxv marcas fratribus Cartusie 
de illis L marcis quas do eis annuatim per cartam meam. 

Teste Willelmo de Sancte Marie Ecclesia. Apud West- 
moster. 

The purpose of these writs might, of course, vary — 
seize A of this land; do right to B for that tenement; 

* Delisle, p. i66, from Madox, Exchequer, i, p. 390. 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE 99 

secure C In his possession; bring your knights to such 
a place at such a time ; summon twelve men to decide 
D's right; — but each has its appropriate form, which 
is always crisp and exact. All speak the language of 
a strong, businesslike administration which expected 
as a matter of course prompt and implicit obedience 
throughout its broad dominions. 

If such a system be given enough time, it will inevit- 
ably exert a strong and persistent influence in favor of 
centralization and uniformity, and it would be inter- 
esting to know just what was accomplished in these 
directions during the half century of the Norman em- 
pire's existence. The parting advice which Henry had 
received from his father Geoffrey was to avoid the trans- 
fer of customs and institutions from one part of his 
realm to another, and the wisdom of the warning was 
obvious under feudal conditions, if not in all imperial 
governments. But there is a difference between the 
field of local custom and the institutions of adminis- 
tration, and while even in matters of feudal law there is 
some evidence of a generalization of certain reforms in 
the rules of succession, in the conduct of government it 
was impossible to keep the different parts of the empire 
in water-tight compartments so long as there was a com- 
mon administration and frequent interchange of officials 
between different regions. We must remember that 
Henry was a constant experimenter, and that if a thing 
worked well in one place it was likely to be tried in an- 



100 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

other. Thus the Assize of Arms and the ordinance for 
the crusading tithe were first promulgated for his con- 
tinental dominions, while the great English inquest of 
knights' fees in 1166 preceded by six years the parallel 
Norman measure. The great struggle with Becket over 
the church courts seems to have had a Norman pro- 
logue. The chronological order in any given case might 
well be a matter of chance; but in administrative mat- 
ters the influence is likely to have travelled from the 
older and better organized to the newer and more 
loosely knit dominions, from England, Normandy, and 
Anjou on the one hand to Poitou, Aquitaine, and Gas- 
cony on the other. 

Of Henry's hereditary territories, Anjou seems the 
least important from the point of view of constitutional 
influence. Much smaller in area than either Normandy 
or England, it was a compact and comparatively cen- 
tralized state long before Henry's accession, but the op- 
portunity for immediate action on the count's part sim- 
plified its government to a point where its experience 
was of no great value under Anglo-Norman conditions. 
Certainly no Angevin influence is traceable in the field 
of finance, and none seems probable in the administration 
of justice. In the case of Normandy and England the 
resemblance of institutions is closest, and a host of inter- 
esting problems present themselves which carry us back 
to the effects of the Norman Conquest and even further. 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE loi 

It is, of course, one of the fundamental problems of 
English history how far the government of England 
was Normanized in the century following the Conquest. 
To a French scholar like Boutmy everything begins 
anew in 1066, when "the line which the whole history 
of political institutions has subsequently followed was 
traced and defined." ^ To Freeman, on the other hand, 
the changes then introduced were temporary and not 
fundamental. He is never tired of repeating that the old 
English are the real English; progress comes by going 
back to the principles of the Anglo-Saxon period and 
casting aside innovations which have crept in in modern 
and evil times; "we have advanced by falling back on a 
more ancient state of things, we have reformed by calling 
to life again the institutions of earlier and ruder times, 
by setting ourselves free from the slavish subtleties of 
Norman lawyers, by casting aside as an accursed thing 
the innovations of Tudor tyranny and Stewart usurpa- 
tion." 2 The trend of present scholarly opinion lies be- 
tween these extremes. It refuses to throw away the 
Anglo-Saxon period, whose institutions we are just be- 
ginning to read aright; but it rejects its idealization at 
Freeman's hands, who, it has been said, saw all things 
"through a mist of moots and witans" and not as they 
really were, and it finds more truth in Carlyle's remark 
that the pot-bellied equanimity of the Anglo-Saxon 

^ The English Constitution, p. 3. 

2 Origin of the English Constitution (London, 1872), p. 20/. 



102 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

needed the drilling and discipline of a century of Nor- 
man tyranny. 1 

Whether he was needed much or little, the Norman 
drill-master came and did his work, and when he had 
finished the two countries were in many respects alike. 
He left his mark on the English language and on Eng- 
lish literature, which were submerged for three centuries 
under the French of the court, the castle, and the town, 
and in the process were permanently modified into a 
mixed speech. He left his mark on architecture in the 
great cathedrals of the Norman bishops and the massive 
castles with their Norman keeps. He made England a 
feudal society, however far it may have gone in that di- 
rection before, and its law, from that day to this, a feu- 
dal law. And he remade the central government under 
the strong hand of a masterful dynasty which compelled 
its subjects to will what the king willed. Whatever per- 
manence we may assign to Anglo-Saxon local institu- 
tions, — and we cannot help granting them this in con- 
siderable measure, — it is not now held that there was 
any notable Anglo-Saxon influence upon the central ad- 
ministration. At best England before the Conquest was 
a loose aggregation of tribal commonwealths divided by 
local feeling and by the jealousies of the great earls, and 
its kingship did not grow stronger with process of time. 
The national assembly of wise men, whose persistence 
Freeman labored in vain to prove, became the feudal 

* Stubbs, Benedict of Peterborough, ii, p. xxxv. 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE 103 

council of the Norman barons, and this council, the 
curia regis, and the royal household which was its per- 
manent nucleus, became the starting-point of a new 
constitutional development which produced the House 
of Lords, the courts of law, and the great departments 
of the central administration. 

Yet in a vigorous state central and local are never 
wholly separable, and it is where they touch that re- 
cent study has been able to show some continuity of 
development between the two periods, namely in the 
fiscal system which culminated in the exchequer of 
the English kings. Of all the institutions of the Anglo- 
Norman state, none is more important and none more 
characteristic than the exchequer, illustrating as it does 
at the same time the comparative wealth of the sover- 
eigns and the efficient conduct of their government. No- 
where in western Europe did a king receive so large a 
revenue as here; nowhere was it collected and adminis- 
tered in so regular and businesslike a fashion ; nowhere 
do the accounts afford so complete a view of "the whole 
framework of society." The main features of this sys- 
tem are simple and striking. 

In every administrative district of Normandy and 
England the king had an agent — in England the sheriff, 
in Normandy the vicomte or bailli — to collect his rev- 
enues, which consisted chiefly of the income from lands 
and forests, the fees and fines in the royal courts, the 



104 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

proceeds of the various feudal incidents, and the va- 
rious payments which there were from time to time 
levied under the name of Danegeld, scutage, aid, or gift. 
Twice a year, at Easter and Michaelmas, these agents 
were required to come to the treasury and render their 
accounts to the king's officers. At Easter the sheriff was 
expected to pay in half of his receipts, receiving there- 
for down to 1826 a receipt in the form of a notched stick 
or tally, split down the middle so that there was exact 
agreement between the portion retained at the exchequer 
and the portion carried off by the sheriff to be produced 
when the acounts of the year were settled at Michael- 
mas. The great session of the exchequer at Michaelmas 
was a very important occasion and is described for us 
in detail in a most interesting contemporary treatise, 
the Dialogue on the Exchequer, written by Richard the 
King's Treasurer, in 1178-79. There the sheriff met 
the great officials of the king's household who were 
also the great officers of the Anglo-Norman state — the 
justiciar, chancellor, constable, treasurer, chamberlains, 
and marshal, reenforced by clerks, tally-cutters, calcu- 
lators, and other assistants. The place and the institu- 
tion took their names from a chequered table or chess- 
board — the Latin name scaccarium means a chess-board 
— in size and shape not unlike a billiard table, covered 
with cloth which was ruled off into columns for pence, 
shillings, pounds, hundreds and thousands of pounds. On 
one side were set forth in this graphic manner the sums 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE 105 

which the sheriff was required to pay, on the other he 
and his clerk tried to offset these with tallies, receipts, 
warrants, and counters representing actual cash. Played 
with skill and care on each side, for the stakes were high, 
this great match was likened to a game of chess between 
the sheriff and the king's officers. Its results were recorded 
each year, district by district and item by item, on a 
great roll, called the pipe roll from the pipes, or skins of 
parchment sewed end to end, of which it was made up. 
For England we have an unbroken series of these rolls 
from the second year of Henry II, as well as an odd roll 
of Henry I, constituting a record of finance and govern- 
ment quite unique in contemporary Europe. The series 
was doubtless as complete for Normandy, but there sur- 
vive from Henry's reign only the roll of 1180 and frag- 
ments of that of 1 184. For the other Plantagenet lands 
nothing remains. 

This remarkable fiscal system comprised accordingly 
a regular method of collecting revenue, a central treas- 
ury and board of account, and a distinctive and care- 
ful mode of auditing the accounts. There was nothing 
like it north of Sicily, and contemporaries admired it 
both for its administrative efficiency and for the wealth 
and resources which it implied. Although something 
of the sort seems to have existed in all the territories of 
the Plantagenet empire and the different bodies seem 
to have maintained a certain amount of cooperation, 
all our records come from England and Normandy, 



io6 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

and there can be no question that it is distinctively 
an Anglo-Norman institution. Whether, however, it is 
Enghsh or Norman in origin and how it came into ex- 
istence, are still in many respects obscure questions. The 
exchequer is not an innovation of Henry II, for the 
surviving roll of Henry I and certain incidental evi- 
dence show that it existed on both sides of the Channel 
in the reign of his grandfather. In the time of the author 
of the Dialogue there was a tradition that it had been 
imported from Normandy by William the Conqueror, 
but this must be discounted by the fact that certain 
elements of the system can be traced in Anglo-Saxon 
England. The truth is that the exchequer is a compli- 
cated institution, some parts of which may be quite 
ancient and the results of parallel development on both 
sides of the Channel; at least the problem of priority 
has reached no certain solution. Its most characteristic 
feature, however, its peculiar method of reckoning, does 
not seem either of Norman or English origin, but derived 
from the abacus of the ancient Romans, as used and 
taught in the continental schools of the eleventh and 
twelfth centuries. 

One who tries to perform with Roman numerals a 
simple problem in addition or subtraction — or better 
yet, in multiplication or division — will have no diffi- 
culty in understanding why people unacquainted with 
the Arabic system of notation have had recourse to a 
counting-machine or abacus. The difficulty, of course, 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE 107 

lies not so much in the clumsy form of the individual 
Roman numbers as in the absence of the zero and the 
reckoning by position which it makes possible. This 
defect the abacus supplied. By means of a sanded board 
or a cloth-covered table or a string of counters it pro- 
vided a row of columns each of which represented a 
decimal group — units, tens, hundreds, etc. — by which 
numerical operations could be rapidly and accurately 
performed. Employed by the ancient Romans, as by 
the modern Chinese, the arithmetic of the abacus be- 
came a regular subject of instruction in the schools of 
the Middle Ages, whence its reckoning was introduced 
into the operations of the Anglo-Norman treasury. The 
most recent student of the subject, Reginald Lane 
Poole, connects the change with the Englishmen who 
studied at the cathedral school of Laon early in the 
twelfth century. To me it seems somewhat earlier, 
brought by abacists who came to England in the 
eleventh century from the schools of Lorraine.^ In 
either case its introduction was much more than a 
change of bookkeeping. Convenient as such reckoning 
was in general, it was the only possible method for men 
who could neither read nor write, like the Anglo-Nor- 
man sheriffs and many of the royal officers, and its use 
made it possible to carry on the fiscal business of the 
state on a large scale, in an open and public fashion, 

^ Poole, The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century, pp. 42-57; Haskins, 
"The Abacus and the King's Curia," in English Historical Review, xxvil, 
pp. 101-06. 



io8 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

with full justice to all parties, and with accuracy, cer- 
tainty, and dispatch. It was a businesslike system for 
busy and businesslike men. 

In the history of judicial administration the personal 
Initiative of Henry II is more evident than In finance. 
The king had an especial fondness for legal questions 
and often participated in their decision, yet his influence 
was exerted particularly to develop a system of courts 
and judges which could work in his absence and with- 
out his intervention. Although the institution is found 
previously both In England and Normandy, It Is in 
Henry's reign that the system of itinerant justices is 
fully organized with regular circuits and a rapidly ex- 
tending jurisdiction which broke down local privileges 
and exemptions and by its decisions created the common 
law. Hitherto chiefly a feudal assembly concerned with 
the causes of the king and his barons, after Henry's 
time the king's court Is a permanent body of profes- 
sional judges and a tribunal for the whole realm. It is no 
accident that his reign produced in the treatise of Glan- 
vill on The Laws and Customs of England the first of the 
great series of textbooks which are the landmarks of 
English legal development. Henry's reign is also an 
Important period in the growth of Norman law, the 
earliest formulation of which reaches us ten years after 
his death In the Tr^s Ancien Coutumier de Normandie, 
and the reduction of local custom to writing Is a process 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE 109 

which went on in his other continental possessions ; yet, 
as in finance, England and Normandy plainly took the 
lead in legal literature and in legal development. In- 
deed, the distinction between justice and finance is less 
sharp than we might at first suppose, for the growth of 
jurisdiction meant increased profit from fees and fines, 
and heavy payments were necessary to secure the inter- 
vention of the royal judges. In this sense Henry has 
often been called, and rightly, a seller of justice, but his 
latest biographer has pointed out that "if the commod- 
ity was expensive it was at least the best of its kind, and 
there is a profound gulf between the selling of justice 
and of injustice. A bribe might be required to set the 
machine of the law in motion, but it would be unavailing 
to divert its course when once started." ^ The wheels of 
government are turned by self-interest as well as by 
unselfish statesmanship. 

Of the many judicial reforms of Henry's reign none 
is more significant than the measures which he took for 
extending the use of the jury as a method of trial in the 
royal courts, and none illustrates better the relation of 
Norman to English institutions. Characteristic as the 
jury is in the history of English government and of 
English law, as at once the palladium of personal lib- 
erty and the basis of representative institutions in Par- 
liament, it is a striking fact that originally it was "not 
popular but royal," not English but Norman, or rather 

; * Salzmann, Henry II, p. 176. 



no NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

Prankish through the intermediary of Normandy.* 
Although it has a history which can be traced for more 
than a thousand years, the jury does not definitely make 
its appearance in England until after the Norman Con- 
quest, and the decisive steps in its further development 
were taken during the union of England and Normandy 
and probably as a result of Norman experience. It is 
now the general opinion of scholars that the modem 
jury is an outgrowth of the sworn inquests of neighbors 
held by command of the Norman and Angevin kings, 
and that the procedure in these inquests is in all essen- 
tial respects the same as that employed by the Prankish 
rulers three centuries before. It is also generally agreed 
that while such inquests appear in England immedi- 
ately after the Norman Conquest, — the returns of the 
Domesday survey are a striking example, — their em- 
ployment in lawsuits remains exceptional until the 
time of Henry II, when they become in certain cases a 
matter of right and a part of the settled law of the land. 
What had been heretofore a special privilege of the 
king and of those to whom he granted it, became under 
Henry a right of his subjects and a part of the regular 
system of justice. Accomplished doubtless gradually, 
first for one class of cases and then for another, this ex- 
tension of the king's prerogative procedure to his sub- 
jects seems to have been formulated in a definite royal 
act or series of acts, probably by royal ordinances or 

^ Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, i, p. 142. 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE in 

assizes, whence the procedure is often called the assize. 
In England the earliest of these assizes known to us 
appears in 1164 in the Constitutions of Clarendon, 
followed shortly by applications of this mode of trial to 
other kinds of cases. In Normandy repeated references 
to similar assizes occur some years earlier, between 1 1 56 
and 1 1 59, so that as far as present evidence goes, the 
priority of Normandy in this respect is clear. More- 
over, Normandy offers two pieces of evidence that are 
still earlier. In the oldest cartulary of Bayeux cathe- 
dral, called the Black Book and still preserved high up 
in one of its ancient towers, are two writs of the duke 
ordering his justices to have determined by sworn in- 
quest, in accordance with the duke's assize, the facts 
in dispute between the bishop of Bayeux and certain of 
his tenants. The ducal initial was left blank when these 
writs were copied into the cartulary, in order that it 
might later be inserted in colors by an illuminator who 
never came; and those who first studied these docu- 
ments drew the hasty conclusion that they were issued 
by Henry as duke of Normandy before he became king. 
It was not, however, usual for the mediaeval scribe to 
leave the rubrlcator entirely without guidance when he 
came to insert his initials, but to mark the proper letter 
lightly in the place itself or on the margin, and an at- 
tentive examination of the well-thumbed margins of 
the Bayeux Black Book shows that this was no excep- 
tion to the rule, and that in both the cases in question 



112 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

the initial G had been carefully indicated. G can, of 
course, stand only for Henry's father Geoffrey, so that 
some general use of the assize as a method of trial in the 
ducal courts can be proved for his reign. As no such 
documents have reached us for his predecessors, it 
would be tempting to assume the influence of Angevin 
precedents; but this runs counter to what we know of 
the judicial institutions of Anjou in this period, as well 
as of the policy of Geoff^rey in Normandy, which was to 
follow in all respects the system of Henry I. Although 
the first general use of the sworn inquest as a mode of 
trial thus antedates Henry II, it is still a Norman in- 
stitution. 

It would carry us too far to discuss the many prob- 
lems connected with the use of the jury in Henry's 
reign or to follow the many changes still needed to con- 
vert the sworn inquest into the modern jury. It is suffi- 
cient for our present purpose to mark its Norman char- 
acter, first as being carried to England by the Normans 
in its older form, and then as being developed Into its 
newer form on Norman soil. It should, however, be 
remembered that its later history belongs to England 
rather than to Normandy. With the rise of new forms 
of procedure in the thirteenth century, the jury on 
the Continent declines and finally disappears; "but for 
the conquest of England," says Maitland, "it would 
have perished and long ago have become a matter for 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE 113 

the antiquary." ^ In England, however, It was early 
brought into relations with the local courts of the hun- 
dred and the county, where it struck root and devel- 
oped into a popular method of trial which was later to 
become a defence against the king's officers who had 
first introduced it. A bulwark of individual liberty, the 
jury also holds an important place in the establishment 
of representative government, for it was through rep- 
resentative juries that the voice of the countryside first 
asserted itself in the local courts, for the assessment of 
taxes as well as for the decision of cases, and it was in 
the negotiations of royal officers with the local juries 
that we can trace the beginnings of the House of Com- 
mons. It is no accident that the first employment of 
local juries for the assessment of military and fiscal ob- 
ligations belongs to the later years of Henry II. 

It may seem a far cry from the Prankish inquests of 
the ninth century to the juries and the representative 
assemblies of the twentieth, but the development is 
continuous, and It leads through Normandy. In this 
sense the English-speaking countries are all heirs of the 
early Normans and of the Norman kings who, all un- 
consciously, provided for the extension and the per- 
petuation of the Norman methods of trial. At such 
points Norman history merges in that of England, the 
British Empire, and the United States. 

* Pollock and Maitland, I, p. 141. 



114 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The chief events in the history of the Norman empire are treated 
in the general works of Miss K. L. Norgate, England under the 
Angevin Kings (London, 1887) ; Sir J. H. Ramsay, The Angevin Empire 
(London, 1903); G. B. Adams, History of England from the Norman 
Conquest to the Death of John (London, 1905) ; H. W. C. Davis, Eng- 
land under the Normans and Angevins (London, 1905). There is a brief 
biography of Henry the Second by Mrs. J. R. Green (London, 1888; 
reprinted, 1903); and a more recent one by L. F. Salzmann (Boston, 
etc., 1 914). A notable characterization of Henry and his work is 
given by William Stubbs, in the introduction to his edition of Benedict 
of Peterborough, 11 (London, 1867), reprinted in his Historical Intro- 
ductions (London, 1902), pp. 89-172. For the continental aspects 
of the reign see F. M. Powicke, The Loss of Normandy (Manchester, 
1913); and his articles in the English Historical Review, xxi, xxil 
(1906-07). Cf. A. Cartellieri, Die Machtstellung Heinrichs II. von 
England, in Neue Heidelberger Jahrbiicher, Vlil, pp. 269-83 (1898); 
F. Hardegen, Imperialpolitik Kbnig Heinrichs II. von England (Heidel- 
berg, 1905). The fullest account of Irish aflfairs is G. H. Orpen, Ireland 
under the Normans (Oxford, 191 1). 

The best general accounts of constitutional and legal matters are 
those of Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, 1 (last edition, 
Oxford, 1903), corrected by various special studies of J. H. Round, to 
be found chiefly in his Feudal England (London, 1895; reprinted, 
1909) and Commune of London (Westminster, 1899); and by Pollock 
and Maitland, History of English Law (second edition, London, 1898). 
The results of recent investigation are incorporated in the studies and 
notes appended to the French translation of Stubbs by Petit-Du- 
taillis (Paris, 1907); this supplementary material is translated into 
English by W. E. Rhodes (Manchester, 191 1). There are admirable 
studies of the chancery in L. Delisle, Recueil des actes de Henri II con- 
cernant les provinces franqaises et les affaires de France, introduction 
(Paris, 1909) ; and of the exchequer in R. L. Poole, The Exchequer in the 
Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1912). See also Hubert Hall, Court Life under 
the Plantagenets (London, 1890; reprinted, 1902). For the more dis- 
tinctively Norman side of the government see Haskins, "The Govern- 



THE NORMAN EMPIRE 115 

ment of Normandy under Henry II," in American Historical Review, 
XX, pp. 24-42, 277-91 (1914-15); and earlier papers on "The Early 
Norman Jury," ibid., viii, pp. 613-40 (1903); "The Administration 
of Normandy under Henry I," in English Historical Review, xxiv, 
pp. 209-31 (1909); "Normandy under Geoffrey Plantagenet," ibid., 
XXVII, pp. 417-44 (1912); Delisle, Des revenus publics en Normandie 
au XIV siecle, in Bibliotheque de I'Ecoledes Charles, x-xiii (1848-52) ; 
Valin, Le due de Normandie et sa cour, supplemented by R. de ¥rk- 
ville, "fitude sur 1 'organisation judiciaire en Normandie aux XII^ et 
Xlll^si^cles," in Nouvelle Revue historique de droit, 1912, pp. 681-736, 
The best general account of Norman law is still that of H. Brunner, 
Die Entstehung der Schwurgerichle (Berlin, 1872). 



V 

NORMANDY AND FRANCE 

IN July, 1 189, Henry II lay dying In his castle at 
Chinon. Abandoned and attacked by his sons, 
driven from LeMans and Tours by Philip of 
France and forced to a hurailiating peace, sick In 
body and broken in spirit, the aged king made his way 
to the old stronghold of the Angevin counts in the val- 
ley of the VIenne. Cursing the faithless Richard as he 
gave him the enforced kiss of peace at Colombieres, he 
had fixed his hopes on his youngest son John till the 
schedule was brought him of those who had thrown off 
their allegiance. "Sire," said the clerk who read the 
document to the fever- tossed king, "may Christ help 
me, the first here written is Count John, your son." 
"What," cried the king, starting up from his bed, 
"John, my very heart, my best beloved, for whose ad- 
vancement I have brought upon me all this misery? 
Now let all things go as they will; I care no more for 
myself nor for anything in this world." Two days later 
he died, cursing his sons, cursing the day he had been 
born, repeating constantly, "Shame on a conquered 
king." Deserted by all save his illegitimate son Geof- 
frey, who received his father's blessing and his signet 
ring marked with the leopard of England, Henry was 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 117 

plundered by his attendants of gold and furnishings 
and apparel, just as William the Conqueror had been 
despoiled in the hour of his death at Rouen, till some 
one in pity threw over the royal corpse the short cloak, 
or 'curt mantle,' by which men called him. Two days 
later he was laid away quietly in the nunnery of Fon- 
tevrault, where a later age was to rob his tomb of all 
save the noble recumbent figure by which it is still 
marked. Thus passed away the greatest ruler of his 
age; thus began the collapse of the Norman empire. 

Strikingly dramatic both in its public and private 
aspects, the end of Henry II offers material fit for a 
Greek tragedy, and we may, if we choose, imagine an 
yEschylus or a Sophocles painting the rapidity of his 
rise, the hybris of his splendor, and the crushing nemesis 
of his fall. Even the Promethean touch is not lacking in 
the withdrawal of Henry's un conquered soul from God, 
as he looked back in flight at the burning city of Le 
Mans: "My God, since to crown my confusion and in- 
crease my disgrace, thou hast taken from me so vilely 
the town which on earth I have loved best, where I was 
born and bred, and where my father lies buried and the 
body of St. Julian too, I will have my revenge on thee 
also; I will of a surety withdraw from thee that thing 
that thou lovest best in me." ^ Henry's life needs no 
blasphemous closing in order to furnish inexhaustible 
* Giraldus Cambrensis (Rolls Series), viii, p. 283. 



ii8 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

material for moralizing, and in a period like the Middle 
Ages, given over as none other to moral lessons, it 
served to point many a tale of the crimes and fate of 
evil-doers. That vain and entertaining Welshman, 
Gerald de Barri, or Giraldus Cambrensis, in whom a 
recent writer thinks he has discovered the proto- 
journalist, ^ found in Henry's career the basis for a con- 
siderable book devoted to the Instruction of Princes. 
But whereas the ways of the gods are dark and un- 
searchable to the Greek tragedians, they have no mys- 
tery for Gerald. Henry's punishment was due to his 
violations of religion, first in his marriage with Eleanor, 
the divorced wife of his feudal lord Louis VII, second in 
his quarrel with Archbishop Becket and the oppression 
of the church which followed, and third and worst of 
all, in his failure to take part in a crusade. The hammer 
of the church, Henry was born for destruction. The 
modern world is more cautious in the matter of ex- 
plaining the inexplicable, and more prone to seek human 
causes when they can be found, yet the collapse of the 
Plantagenet empire is not the hardest of the historian's 
problems. Something he will ascribe to larger forces of 
development, something he can hardly fail to attribute 
to the character of Henry's sons and to his policy in 
dealing with them. 

Henry II is not the only case in history of a king who 
could rule every house but his own, of a father who was 

* Salzmann, Henry II, p. 214. 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 119 

shrewd and stern in his dealings with the world but 
swayed by unrequited affection and ill-timed weakness 
in dealing with his children. Knowing other men, he 
did not know his sons, and his grave errors in dealing 
with them were errors of public policy, since they 
concerned the government of his dominions and the 
succession to the throne. Even those who had no sym- 
pathy for Henry had little to say to excuse the charac- 
ter and the unfilial conduct of his sons. "From the 
Devil we come, and to the Devil we return," Richard 
was reported to have said; and none cared to con- 
tradict him. Of the four lawful sons who grew to ma- 
turity, the eldest was Henry, crowned king by his 
father in 1 1 70, and hence generally known as the Young 
King. Handsome and agreeable, prodigal in largesse, a 
patron of knightly sports and especially of the tourna- 
ments which were then coming into fashion, the Young 
King enjoyed great popularity in his lifetime and after 
his early death was mourned as a peer of Hector and 
Achilles and enshrined as a hero of courtly romance. 
Yet for all this there was no substantial foundation. 
He was faithless, ungrateful, utterly selfish, a thorn in 
his father's side and a constant source of weakness to 
the empire. Married at the age of five to the daughter 
of Louis VH, he became the instrument of the French 
king in his intrigues against Henry H and the rallying 
point of feudal reaction and personal jealousy. King in 
name though not in fact, having been crowned merely 



120 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

as a means of securing the succession, Prince Henry 
craved at least an under-kingdom of his own, and on 
two occasions, in 1173 and again in 1183, led serious 
and widespread revolts against his father, the evil 
results of which were not undone by his death-bed re- 
pentance in the midst of the second uprising. In this 
revolt of 1 1 83 he had with him his younger brother 
Geoffrey, duke of Brittany, 'the son of perdition,' 
equally false and treacherous, without even the re- 
deeming virtue of popularity. Fortunately Geoffrey 
also died before his father. 

The death of the Young King left as Henry's eldest 
heir Richard, known to the modern world as the Lion- 
Hearted. With much of his father's energy, Richard 
seems to have inherited more than any of his brothers 
the tastes and temperament of his mother, Eleanor of 
Aquitaine. Adventurous and high-spirited, fond of 
pomp and splendor, a lover of poetry and music, be it 
the songs of Provengal minstrels or the solemn chants of 
the church, he belonged on this side of his nature to the 
dukes of Aquitaine and the country of the troubadours. 
He loved war and danger, in which he showed great 
personal courage, and in the conduct of military enter- 
prises gave evidence of marked ability as a strategist; 
but his gifts as a ruler stopped there. The glamour of 
his personal exploits and the romance of his crusading 
adventures might dazzle the imagination of contempo- 
raries more than the prosaic achievements of his father, 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 121 

and his gifts to religious houses might even predispose 
monastic historians in his favor, but for all this splendor 
his subjects paid the bills. In spite of his great income, 
he was always in need of money for his extravagances; 
and for his fiscal exactions there was never the excuse of 
large measures of public policy. Indeed, so far as we can 
see, Richard had no public policy. "His ambition," says 
Stubbs, "was that of a mere warrior: he would fight for 
anything whatever, but he would sell everything that 
was worth fighting for." ^ Self-willed and self-centred, 
he followed wherever his desires led, with no sense of 
loyalty to his obligations or of responsibility as a ruler. 
Made duke of Aquitalne at seventeen, he sought to ride 
down every obstacle and bring immediate order and 
unity into a region which had never enjoyed either of 
these benefits ; and he quickly had by the ears the land 
which he should have best understood. He was soon in 
revolt against his father and also at war with the Young 
King; for his own purposes he later went over to the king 
of France, and jested with his boon companions over his 
father's discomfiture and downfall. Even as king at the 
age of thirty-two, Richard remained an impetuous 
youth ; he never really grew up. Haughty and overbear- 
ing, he alienated friends and allies; inheriting the rule of 
the vast Plantagenet empire, he showed no realization of 
imperial duty or opportunity. Thus he visited England 
but twice in the course of his reign of ten years and 

^ Constitutional History, i, p. 551. 



122 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

valued it solely as a land from which revenue might be 
wrung by his ministers, nor did his continental domin- 
ions derive advantage from his presence. Impetuous 
and short-sighted, Richard Yea-and-Nay had to meet 
the greatest statesman of his day in deadly rivalry ; and 
though panegyrists placed him above Alexander, Charle- 
magne, and King Arthur, he went down ignominiously 
before Philip Augustus. 

Last of all comes the youngest son John, "my heart, 
my best beloved." Never did father lavish his affection 
on a more unworthy child. False to his father, false to 
his brother Richard, John proved false to all, man or 
woman, who ever trusted him. He had none of the dash 
and courage of Richard, none of his large and splendid 
way, and none of his popularity and gift of leadership. 
Men saw him as he was, no Charlemagne or Arthur, but 
petty, mean, and cowardly, small even in his blasphe- 
mies, swearing by the feet or the teeth of God, when 
Henry II had habitually sworn by his eyes, and William 
the Conqueror by his splendor — par la resplendor De! 
Always devious in his ways, John's cunning sometimes 
got him the reputation for cleverness, and John Richard 
Green went so far as to call him "the ablest and most 
ruthless of the Angevins." But his ability, particularly 
in military matters not inconsiderable, was of the kind 
which wasted itself in temporary expedients and small 
successes; it was incapable of continuous policy or sus- 
tained efforts ; and it everywhere ended in failure. Ger- 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 123 

aid the Welshman, the friend of his youth, at the end 
can only pronounce him the worst of history's tyrants. 
John's whole career offers the most convincing evidence 
of the futility of talent when divorced from character, 
by which is here meant, not so much private virtue, — 
for John's private vices were shared with others of his 
family and his time, — but merely common honor, 
trustworthiness, and steadfastness. Even in his wicked- 
ness John was shifty and false, and his loss of his empire 
was due, not to any single blunder or series of blunders, 
but to the supreme sin of lack of character. 

It is thus possible to see how largely the collapse of 
the Norman empire was bound up with the family history 
of Henry II — the foolish indulgence of the father, the 
ambitions and intrigues of the mother, the jealousies, 
treachery, and political incapacity of the sons. A per- 
sonal creation, the Plantagenet state fell in large meas- 
ure for personal reasons. If it was Henry's misfortune to 
have such sons, one may say it was also his misfortune to 
have more than one son of any sort, since each became 
the nucleus of a separatist movement in some particular 
territory. The kings of France, it has often been pointed 
out, had for generations the great advantage of having a 
son to succeed, but only a single son. The crowning of 
the French heir in his father's lifetime assured an undis- 
puted succession; the crowning of the Young King left 
him dissatisfied and stirred up the rivalry of his younger 
brothers. 



124 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

But this is not the whole of the story. The very 
strength and efficiency of Henry's government were 
sure to produce a reaction in favor of feudal liberties in 
which his sons serve simply as convenient centres of 
crystallization. Only time could unify each of these 
dominions internally, while far more time was required 
to consolidate them into a permanent kingdom, and 
these processes were interrupted when they had barely 
begun. Such a solution of the ultimate problem of con- 
solidation was, we have seen, entirely possible and even 
natural; but another was possible and also natural, 
namely the union of these territories under the king of 
France. Geography, as well as history, favored the 
second alternative. 

The geographical unity of Trance is one of the most 
obvious facts on the map of Europe. The Alps and the 
Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, are its 
natural frontiers; only on the northeast are the lines 
blurred by nature and left to history to determine. 
Within these limits there are of course many clearly 
marked subdivisions — the valleys of the Rhone, Ga- 
ronne, Loire, and Seine, Gascony, Brittany, Normandy, 
Flanders, and the rest — which formed the great fiefs of 
the Middle Ages and the great provinces of later times. 
Sooner or later, however, as population increased, as 
trade and commerce developed, and as the means of 
communication were strengthened, these divisions were 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 125 

certain to draw together into a single great state. 
Where the centre of the new state would lie was not a 
matter of accident but was largely determined by the 
great lines of communication, and especially by the com- 
mercial axis which runs from the Mediterranean to 
Flanders and the English Channel. On this line are sit- 
uated the Roman capital of the Gauls, Lyons, and the 
modern capital, Paris. This fact, combined with the 
central and dominant position of the Paris basin in rela- 
tion to the great valleys of the Seine, the Loire, and the 
Meuse, established the region about Paris, the Ile-de- 
France of history, as the natural centre of this future 
nation. Such a state might grow from without toward 
its centre, as the modern kingdom of Italy closed in on 
Rome, but the more natural process was from the centre 
outward, as England grew about Wessex or Branden- 
burg about the region near Berlin. In the great contest 
between Capetian and Plantagenet the Capetian "held 
the inner lines." Shut off from the sea on the side of the 
Loire as well as on the side of the Seine, he was in a posi- 
tion to concentrate all his efforts to break through the 
iron ring, while the Norman rulers had to hold together 
the whole of their far-spread territories against reaction 
and rebellion at home as well as against the French at 
Tours and LeMans and in the Vexin. Meanwhile up 
and down these valleys the influences of trade, com- 
merce, and travel were at work breaking down the polit- 
ical barriers and drawing the remoter regions toward the 



126 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

geographical centre. The rivers in their courses fought 
against the Plantagenets. 

The personal element in the struggle was weighted 
against the Anglo-Norman empire even more strongly 
than the physiographic, for the weak links in the 
Plantagenet succession ran parallel to the strongest 
portion of the Capetian line. Against a knight-errant 
like Richard and a trifler like John, stood a great 
European statesman in the person of Philip Augustus, 
king of France during forty-four years, and more 
than any single man the creator of the French mon- 
archy. 

Philip Augustus was not an heroic figure, and to the 
men of his age he was probably less sympathetic than his 
adversary Richard. Vigorous and enduring, a generous 
liver, quick-tempered but slow to cherish hatred, Philip 
was preeminently the cautious, shrewd, unscrupulous, 
far-sighted statesman. He could fight when necessary, 
but he had no great personal courage and excelled in 
strategy and prevision rather than in tactics or leader- 
ship in the field, and he preferred to gain his ends by 
the arts of diplomacy. The quality upon which all his 
contemporaries dwell is his wisdom. Throughout his 
long reign he kept before him as his one aim the increase 
of the royal power, and by his patient and fortunate 
efforts he broke down the Plantagenet empire, doubled 
the royal revenue and more than doubled the royal do- 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 127 

main, and made France the leading international power 
in western Europe. 

As we have already seen, Philip had made substantial 
headway even during the lifetime of Henry II. Crowned 
in 1 1 79 at the age of fourteen, a year before the death 
of his paralytic father Louis VII, Philip was naturally 
treated as a boy by Henry, who seems, however, to have 
acted throughout with due regard to Philip's position as 
king and his feudal suzerain. In the complications of 
those early years we find Henry constantly arranging 
disputes with the king's vassals and more than once 
saving him from a tight place. But as time went on this 
relation became impossible. Philip openly abetted the 
revolts of the Young King and of Richard, and in the 
war which broke out at the end Richard fought openly 
on his side. As soon, however, as Richard succeeded to 
the throne, Philip began hostilities with him, and he 
soon used John against Richard as he had used Rich- 
ard against his father. "Divide and rule," was clearly 
Philip's policy, and he always had on his side the fact 
that he was king in France and the Plantagenets on the 
Continent were his vassals. 

The first phase of the contest between Richard and 
Philip comes as a welcome interlude in the tale of border 
disputes and family rivalries which make up the greater 
part of the tangled story of Philip's dealings with the 
Norman empire. It takes us over the sea to the fair land 
of Sicily and on to the very gates of the Holy City. In 



128 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

1 187 the capture of Jerusalem had crowned the long 
efforts of the great Saladin, and where a century before 
Christian knights had ridden " up to their bridles " in the 
blood of the slaughtered Moslem, a procession of knights 
and priests and poorer folk passed out of the gate of 
David and left the Holy Sepulchre to the infidel. To the 
Saracens a certain sign that they were the only people 
"whose doctrine was agreeable to God," the fall of 
Jerusalem killed the aged Pope, plunged Europe into 
prayer and fasting, and brought on the Third Crusade, 
under the leadership of the emperor Frederick Barba- 
rossa, Philip of France, and Richard of England. Rich- 
ard, then merely count of Poitou, was the first western 
prince to take the cross in this holy war; his father and 
Philip soon sealed their crusading vows with a public 
reconciliation under a great elm on the borders of Nor- 
mandy and France, and the chroniclers tell us that 
every man made peace with his neighbor, thinking no 
more of tournaments and fine raiment, the lust of the 
flesh and the pride of the eye, but only of the recovery 
of the Holy City. Such great waves of renunciation and 
religious enthusiasm are peculiarly characteristic of the 
Middle Ages, but their force was soon spent. Then, as 
in other times, there were few who could live as on a 
mountain-top. In spite of all that the church could do, 
Henry and Philip soon came to open war, and the cause 
of Jerusalem was swallowed up in a struggle for the Loire 
and for Aquitanian fortresses. Richard, as we have seen, 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 129 

was a central point in these conflicts, and his accession 
to the throne simply continued the struggle in another 
form. 

Nevertheless a peace was patched up, and the unwill- 
ing Philip was unable to hold aloof from the crusade 
which fired the military ardor of his chief vassal and 
rival. Large sums of money were raised by every means, 
and the two kings made an agreement to divide equally 
all the spoil of their expedition. They also arranged to 
go by sea to the East after they had assembled their 
ships and followers at Messina, thus avoiding the usual 
complications with the Eastern Empire and the fatal 
march through the barren and hostile interior of Asia 
Minor which now claimed another victim in the gallant 
German emperor. At the best, however, a crusade was 
not an organized campaign under efficient direction, but 
merely a number of independent expeditions which 
found it convenient to go at the same time and by the 
same route. There was no supreme command, and there 
was constant jealousy and friction between feudal lords 
who were ever impatient of restraint and careful of points 
of dignity and precedence. The presence of a king was 
of some help, the presence of two only made matters 
worse. If the causes of rivalry at home and the slighting 
of Philip's sister could have been forgotten, there was still 
the fact that Richard was Philip's vassal as well as his 
equal, and Richard was not of the type to spare Philip's 
susceptibilities. Rich, open-handed, fond of display, 



130 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

Lion-Heart "loved the lime-light," and his overbear- 
ing nature and lack of tact made it impossible for him to 
cooperate with others. He characteristically went his 
own way, paying scant attention to Philip and acting as 
if the leadership of the expedition belonged to himself as 
a matter of course. Relations became strained during 
the sojourn at Messina and grew worse in Palestine, 
where the affairs of the Latin kingdom and the rivalries 
of lesser princes added fuel to the flame. "The two kings 
and peoples," says an English chronicler, "did less to- 
gether than they would have done separately, and each 
set but light store by the other." Sick of the whole en- 
terprise, after four months in the East, Philip seized the 
first excuse to return home, departing in August, 1191. 
Richard stayed a year longer in Palestine, yet he never 
entered Jerusalem and had finally to retire with a disap- 
pointing truce and to spend another year, and more, 
languishing in German prisons. The events of these 
months do not concern the history of Normandy, but 
if we would behold Richard in his fairest light we must 
see him as he rushed to the relief of Joppa on the first of 
August, 1 192, wading ashore from his red galley with the 
cry, "Perish the man who would hang back," covering 
the landing of his followers with his crossbow, making 
his way by a winding stair to the house of the Templars 
on the town wall, and then, sword in hand, clearing the 
town of three thousand Turks and pursuing them into 
the plain with but three horsemen ; or, four days later, 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 131 

repelling a Mameluke attack in force by a most skilful 
tactical arrangement of his meagre army, directing the 
battle on the beach while he also kept the town clear, 
*' slaying innumerable Turks with his gleaming sword, 
here cleaving a man from the crown of his head to his 
teeth," there cutting off with one blow the head, shoulder, 
and right arm of a Saracen emir, his coat of mail and his 
horse bristling with javelins and arrows like a hedgehog, 
yet "remaining unconquerable and unwounded in ac- 
cordance with the divine decree." ^ 

What most concerned the Norman empire was the 
king's absence since the summer of 11 90, prolonged by 
his captivity in Germany until the spring of 1194. Al- 
though Philip had taken an oath before leaving Pales- 
tine to respect Richard's men and possessions during his 
absence, and even to protect them like his own city of 
Paris, he sought release from this engagement as soon as 
he reached Rome on his homeward journey, and once 
back in France he soon began active preparations for an 
attack on the Plantagenet territories. With Richard safe 
in a German dungeon, he seized a large part of the Nor- 
man border and made a secret treaty with John which 
secured the surrender of all the lands east of the Seine 
and important fortresses in Anjou and Touraine. He 
offered huge sums of money to secure Richard's custody 

^ See the extracts from the chroniclers translated in T. A. Archer, The 
Crusade of Richard I (London, 1888), pp. 285 jf. 



132 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

or even his continued detention in Germany, and when 
early in 1 194 he warned John that "the Devil was loose" 
at last, he was besieging the great fortress of Verneull on 
the Norman frontier. When Richard landed at Barfleur 
in May, amid the ringing of bells and processions singing 
"God has come again in his strength," it is small wonder 
that he came breathing vengeance and slaughter, and 
that the rest of his life is a record of scarcely interrupted 
war against the king of France. For many years he is 
said to have refused the sacrament lest he might have to 
forgive his enemy. Again and again he had Philip on the 
run. Once Philip lost all his baggage and saved himself 
by turning aside to hear mass while Richard rode by ; on 
another occasion Richard drove the French into Gisors 
so that the bridge broke under them "and the king of 
France drank of the river, and twenty of his knights 
were drowned." 

Such scenes, however, are only the striking episodes in 
a series of campaigns which are confused and compli- 
cated and do not lend themselves to clear narration. 
Decisive engagements were rare, each side seeking 
rather to wear out the other. Money was spent freely 
for allies and mercenaries — a contemporary called the 
struggle one between the pound sterling and the pound 
of Tours, and the advantage was on the side of the 
pounds sterling by reason of their greater number. 
There was usually a campaign in the spring and summer, 
ending in a truce in the autumn which the church tried 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 133 

to prolong into a lasting peace but which soon broke 
down in a new war. The wars were for the most part 
border forays, in which the country was burned and 
wasted far and wide, to the injury chiefly of the peas- 
ants, upon whom the burden of mediaeval warfare 
mainly fell. "First destroy the land, then the enemy," 
was the watchword. Booty and ransom were the object 
as well as military advantages, so that even the contests 
between knights had their sordid side, so definitely were 
they directed toward taking profitable prisoners; while 
feudal notions of honor might cause Richard to put out 
the eyes of fifteen prisoners and send them to Philip 
under the guidance of one of their number who had been 
left one eye, whereupon Philip blinded an equal number 
of knights and sent them to Richard under the guidance 
of the wife of one of them, "in order," says his eulogist,^ 
"that no one should think he was afraid of Richard or 
inferior to him in force and courage." 

The brunt of the war fell on Normandy and ulti- 
mately on the castles which supplied the duchy's lack 
of natural frontiers. To supplement the great interior 
fortresses of Caen, Falaise, Argentan, Montfort, and 
Rouen, Henry I began the organization of a series of 
fortifications on the southern and eastern borders. 
Henry H, we are told, improved or renewed nearly all 
these strongholds, and especially Gisors, the frontier 
gateway toward France, on which fortress the exchequer 

* Guillaume le Breton, Philippide, v, lines 316-27. 



134 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

roll shows him expending 2650 pounds Angevin in a 
single year. These castles, remains of many of which are 
still standing, were typical of the best military architec- 
ture of their age, but they were inferior in strength and 
scientific construction to the great fortresses of Christian 
Syria, such as Krak or Margat, which seem to have gone 
back to Byzantine and even Persian models. A keen 
warrior like Richard had not spent his two years in Pal- 
estine without gaining an expert knowledge of eastern 
methods in the art of war, and we are not surprised to 
find that he had Saracen soldiers and Syrian artillery- 
men with him in his Norman campaigns, and that he 
made large use of oriental experience in strengthening 
his defences. His masterpiece, of course, was Chateau 
Gaillard, the saucy castle on the Seine controlling the 
passage of the river and its tributaries in that region of 
the Norman Vexin which was the great bone of conten- 
tion between the Plantagenets and the French kings. 
Having first expropriated at great expense the lord of 
the region, the archbishop of Rouen, he fortified the 
adjacent island of Andeli and laid out a new town on the 
bank. This he surrounded with water and reenforced 
with towers and battlements, protecting the whole with 
a stockade across the river and outlying works farther 
up. Then on the great rock above he built the fortress, 
with its triangular advance work, its elliptical citadel, 
and its circular keep surrounded by a "fosse cut almost 
vertically out of the rock." There was no dead angle, 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 135 

such as permitted sappers to reach the base of rectilinear 
walls, but instead a sloping base down which projectiles 
might ricochet ; nor was there, as at the corners of square 
towers, any part of the surrounding area which could 
not be reached by direct fire from within. "The ap- 
proaches and the fosse,'' says Dieulafoy,^ "were covered 
by the fire of the garrison right up to the foot of the 
scarp, and no sapper could touch any point in towers 
or walls, provided that the fortress was under the direc- 
tion of an experienced commander." This qualification 
is important, for the new type of fortification was de- 
signed for an active defence, one might almost say an 
offensive defence, and not for the mere passive resist- 
ance with which the older strategy had been content. 
The works at Andeli, carried on largely under Richard's 
personal direction, occupied more than a year of labor 
and cost nearly 50,000 pounds Angevin, which we find 
distributed in the royal accounts over lumber and stone 
and hardware, and among masons and carpenters and 
stone-cutters and lesser laborers. 

By the year 11 99 Richard had recovered his Norman 
possessions save Gisors and certain castles on the border, 
where Philip never lost his foothold, and he had raised 
an effective barrier to French advance in the valley of 
the Seine. Strong allies were on his side, and the diplo- 
matic situation was decidedly in his favor. Never had 

^ Le CMteau-Gaillard, in Memoires de I'AcadSmie des Inscriptions, 
XXXVI, I, p. 330. 



136 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

Philip been so hard pressed, and even the friendly legate 
of the Pope could secure for him nothing better than 
the retention of Gisors in the truce which was then 
drawn up. And then a second stroke of fortune, greater 
even than the captivity of 1192, came to Philip's aid. 
Richard, impetuous and headstrong as ever, spoiled all 
by a raid on an Aquitanian rebel in which he lost his 
life. His energy, his military skill, and his vivid per- 
sonality had concealed the fundamental weakness of his 
position against France ; his removal meant the swift fall 
of the Norman empire. 

At Richard's death there were two possible succes- 
sors, his younger brother John, whom he had designated 
heir, and his nephew Arthur, son of his elder brother 
Geoffrey and duke of Brittany. There was enough un- 
certainty in feudal law to admit of a plausible case for 
either one, but Arthur was only twelve and John quickly 
took possession, being crowned at Rouen in April and at 
Westminster in May. Arthur, however, had the follow- 
ing of his Bretons and, what was more important, the 
support of Philip Augustus, who used Arthur against 
John as he had used John against Richard and Richard 
against his father. Philip confirmed Arthur as count of 
Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, and soon brought him to 
Paris, where he was betrothed to Philip's daughter. 
Nevertheless the course of events at first favored John. 
Philip was in the midst of the great struggle with Pope 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 137 

Innocent III over the divorce of his queen Ingeborg, 
and a treaty was signed in 1200, by which, on giving up 
territory in the Norman border and in central France 
and paying a large relief of 20,000 marks for his lands, 
John was confirmed in his control of Anjou and Brit- 
tany, while a visit to Paris, where he was splendidly 
received, seemed to crown the reconciliation. In a posi- 
tion, however, where all possible strength and resource- 
fulness were required, John's defects of character proved 
fatal. No one could depend upon him for loyalty, judg- 
ment, or even persistence, and he quickly earned his 
name of "Soft-Sword." 

Meanwhile the legally-minded Philip, while spending 
money freely on John's followers and abating nothing 
of his diplomatic and military efforts, brought to bear 
the weapons of law. The revival of legal studies in the 
twelfth century had given rise in western Europe to a 
body of professional lawyers, skilled in the Roman and 
the canon law, and quick to turn their learning to the 
advantage of the princes whom they served. Philip had 
a number of such advisers at his court, and they doubt- 
less contributed to the more lawyerlike methods of 
doing things which make their appearance in his reign; 
but it was feudal custom, and not Roman law, that he 
used against John. In law John was Philip's vassal, — 
indeed, he had just confessed as much in the treaty of 
1200, — and as such was held to attend Philip's feudal 
court and subject himself to its decision in disputes 



138 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

with other vassals. It might be urged that the king of 
England was too great a man to submit to such juris- 
diction, and that the duke of Normandy had been in 
the habit of satisfying his feudal obligations by a formal 
ceremony at the Norman frontier; still the technical 
law was on the side of the king of France, and a suzerain 
had at last come who was able to translate theory into 
fact. In the course of a series of adventures in Poitou 
John carried off the fianc6e of one of his barons of the 
house of Lusignan, who appealed to his superior lord, 
the king of France. All this was in due form, but Philip 
was no lion of justice eager to redress injuries for jus- 
tice' sake. He waited nearly two years, John's visit to 
Paris falling in the interval, and then, when he was 
ready to execute sentence, promptly summoned John 
before the feudal court of peers. John neither came nor 
appeared through a representative, and the court in 
April, 1 202, declared him deprived of all his lands for 
having refused to obey his lord's commands or render 
the services due from him as vassal. The capture of 
Arthur temporarily checked Philip; the boy's murder 
by John in the course of 1203 simply recoiled on the 
murderer. Whether this crime led to a second con- 
demnation by the court of peers, as was alleged by the 
French at the time of the abortive invasion of England 
in 12 16, is a question which has been sharply discussed 
among scholars. What has now become the orthodox 
view holds that there was no second condemnation, 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 139 

but a clever case has recently been made by Powicke, 
who, minimizing the importance of the accepted argu- 
ment from the silence of immediate contemporaries, 
argues, on the basis of the Annals of Mar gam, that 
there probably was a second condemnation in 1204. 
After all, the question is of subordinate importance, for 
Philip's effective action was based on the trial of 1202, 
and by 1204 John's fate was already sealed. 

The decisive point in the campaign against Nor- 
mandy was the capture of Chateau Gaillard, the key to 
the Seine valley, in May, 1204, after a siege of six 
months which seems to have justified its designer, save 
for a stone bridge which sheltered the engineers who 
undermined the outer wall. Western Normandy fell 
before an attack from the side of Brittany; the great 
fortresses of the centre, Argentan, Falaise, and Caen, 
opened their gates to Philip ; and with the surrender of 
Rouen, 24 June, 1204, Philip was master of Normandy. 
John had lingered in England, doing nothing to support 
the defense, and when he crossed at last in 1206 he was 
obliged to sign a final surrender of all the territories 
north of the Loire, retaining only southern Poitou and 
Gascony. Gascony and England were united for two 
centuries longer, but the only connection was by sea. 
The control of the Seine and the Loire had been lost, 
and with that passed away the Plantagenet empire. 

The results of the separation of Normandy from 



140 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

England have been a favorite subject with historians, 
and especially with those who approach the Middle 
Ages from the point of view of modern politics and 
modern ideas of nationality. It all seems so natural 
that Normandy should belong with France and not 
with England. Nationality, however, is an elusive 
thing, and many forces besides geography have made 
the modern map. England in the Middle Ages had 
much more in common with Normandy than she had 
with Wales or Scotland, while in feeling, as well as in 
space, the Irish Sea was wider than the Channel. From 
the English point of view there was nothing inevitable 
in the loss of Normandy. On the French side the mat- 
ter is more obvious. If Paris was to be the capital, it 
must control the Seine and the Loire, and when it 
gained control of them, its position in France was as- 
sured. The possession of Normandy meant far more to 
France than to England. Moreover the conquest of 
Normandy cut England and France loose from each 
other. The Anglo-Norman barons must decide whether 
they would serve the king of England or the king of 
France, and they were quickly absorbed into the coun- 
try with which they threw in their lot. It was no longer 
possible to play one set of interests against another; 
turned back on themselves, the English barons met 
John on their own ground and won the Great Charter, 
so that the loss of Normandy has a direct bearing on 
the growth of English liberty. "When the Normans 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 141 

became French," concludes Powicke, "they did a great 
deal more than bring their national epic to a close. 
They permitted the English once more to become a 
nation, and they established the French state for all 
time." 1 

Viewed in this way, the end of Normandy almost 
seems more glorious than Normandy itself; as was said 
of Samson, "the dead which he slew at his death were 
more than they which he slew in his life." But of 
course in the larger sense the work of the Norman em- 
pire was not ended in 1204. For one thing, the admin- 
istrative organization of the Norman duchy could not 
fail to exert an influence upon the French monarchy. 
In spite of the great progress made by the Capetian 
kings of the twelfth century, the Norman government 
still maintained its marked superiority as a system of 
judicial and fiscal administration, and Philip Augustus 
was not the man to neglect the lessons it might have 
for him. The nature and extent of Norman influence 
upon French institutions is a subject which is still dark 
to us and for lack of evidence may always remain dark ; 
but there can be little doubt that Norman precedents 
were followed at various points in the development of 
the Parlement of Paris and in the elaboration of the 
French financial system. In the main, however, the 
influence was inevitably in the other direction, from 
France upon Normandy, not from Normandy upon 
^ The Loss of Normandy, p. 449. 



142 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

France. There was, it is true, no sudden change. Philip 
respected vested interests, both in the church and 
among the barons, and preserved Norman customs, so 
that the duchy long retained its individuahty of law, 
of local organization, and of character, and secured its 
rights from Louis X in a document of 13 15, the Charte 
aux Normands, which has sometimes been compared 
in a small way to the Great Charter. The Coutume de 
Normandie persisted, like the customs of the other 
great provinces, until the French Revolution, but it was 
a body of custom worked out under the influence of the 
central government and gradually absorbing the juris- 
prudence of the king's court. If the Norman exchequer 
continued to sit at Rouen, it was presided over by 
commissioners sent out from Paris. Even that most 
characteristic of Norman institutions, trial by jury, 
was insensibly modified by the new inquisitorial pro- 
cedure of the thirteenth century and silently disap- 
peared from the practice of the Continent. As in law 
and government, so in culture and social life, the forces 
of centralization did their work none the less effectively 
because they were gradual, and Normandy became a 
part of France. 

There was, it is true, a period when Normandy was 
once more united to England, this time as a conquered 
country. Between 1417 and 1419 Henry V subdued 
Normandy in a series of well-conducted campaigns, and 
he and his son remained in possession of the duchy un- 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 143 

til 1450. During this period of English rule no effort 
seems to have been made to restore earlier conditions 
which had now been outgrown: law, local government, 
jfiscal organization continued unchanged. English offi- 
cials were, of course, appointed, and English immigra- 
tion was encouraged at the expense of the lands of the 
Normans who had left the province. The first Norman 
university was founded at Caen in the reign of Henry 
VI. In the face, however, of all efforts at conciliation 
and fair treatment the population remained hostile. 
The idea that the Englishman was a foreigner had 
grown up during two centuries of absence; it was to 
crystallize definitely as the conception of French na- 
tionality took form through the work of Joan of Arc. 
Lavisse has reminded us^ that this war "was not a con- 
flict between one nation and another, between the gen- 
ius of one people and that of another; nevertheless it 
continued, and was fierce as well as long. From year to 
year the hatred against the English increased. In con- 
tact with the foreigner France began to know herself, 
like the ego in contact with the non-ego. Vanquished 
she felt the disgrace of defeat. Acts of municipal and 
local patriotism preceded and heralded French patriot- 
ism, which finally blossomed out in Joan of Arc, and 
sanctified itself with the perfume of a miracle. Out of 
France with the English ! They left France, and France 

^ General View of the Political History of Europe (translated by Charles 
Gross), p. 64. 



144 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

came into existence," In this rapid growth of French 
national consciousness Normandy had its full share, 
and some of its great scenes are set on Norman soil. It 
was at Rouen that Joan of Arc was tried and condemned 
by the Inquisition; it was in the old market-place of 
this same city that the English soldiers discovered too 
late that they had burned a saint. 

And so it came about that twenty years later the 
Normans welcomed the troops of Charles VII and 
passed finally under French sway. Proud of its past, 
proud also of its provincialisms and local peculiarities, 
Normandy was nevertheless French in feeling and in- 
terests, and grew more French with time under the 
unifying force of the absolute monarchy, the Revolu- 
tion, and the modern republic. It ceased to be a duchy 
in 1467; it ceased to be even a political division with 
the creation of the modern departments in 1790. Its 
last survival as an area recognized by the government, 
the ecclesiastical province of Rouen, disappeared with 
the final separation of church and state in 1905. The 
only unity which its five departments now retain is 
that of the history and tradition of a common past — 
of a petite patrie now swallowed up in the nation. 

Only at one point did the old Normandy really main- 
tain itself against the forces of centralization, namely 
in the Channel Islands, those "bits of France fallen 
into the sea and picked up by England," as Victor 
Hugo calls them. These were not conquered by Philip 



; NORMANDY AND FRANCE 145 

or his successors, and have remained from that day to 
this attached to the EngHsh crown. They still have 
their baillis and vicomtes, their knights' fees and feudal 
modes of tenure. The Norman dialect is still their lan- 
guage; the Coutume de Normandie is still the basis of 
their law ; and one may still hear, in disputes concerning 
property in Jersey and Guernsey, the old cry of haro 
which preserves one of the most archaic features of 
Norman procedure. 

After all is said, it is in England that the most perma- 
nent work of the Normans survives. They created the 
English central government and impressed upon it their 
conceptions of order and of law. Their feudalism per- 
meated English society; their customs shaped much of 
English jurisprudence; their kings and nobles were the 
dominant class in English government. Freeman could 
never understand those who claimed that, as he declared, 
"we English are not ourselves but somebody else." The 
fact, however, remains that in a mixed race — and all 
races are to some extent mixed — there is no such thing 
as 'ourselves'; and if the numerical preponderance in 
the English people is largely that of pre-Norman ele- 
ments, the Norman strain has exerted an influence out 
of all proportion to its numerical strength. Without 
William the Conqueror and Henry II the English would 
not be 'themselves,' whatever else they might have 
become. 



146 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

For a more specific illustration let us come back once 
more to the jury. If the jury died out in Normandy, it 
survived in England, where it flourished in the fertile soil 
of the popular local courts. It spread to the British 
colonies and to the United States ; it has in recent times 
been reintroduced on the Continent. But it is still the 
same fundamental institution, bound by direct continu- 
ity with the old Prankish procedure through the Nor- 
man inquests of the twelfth century. Wherever the 
twelve good men and true are gathered together, we can 
see the juries of Henry II behind them. In such matters 
the Norman influence is thus as wide as the common 
law; we are all heirs of the early Normans. As Preeman 
well says: "We can never be as if the Norman had never 
come among us. We ever bear about us the signs of his 
presence. Our colonists have carried those signs with 
them into distant lands, to remind men that settlers in 
America and Australia came from a land which the 
Norman once entered as a conqueror." ^ 

Our survey of Norman history might perhaps stop 
here ; but it needs to be rounded out in two directions. 
We have been so busy with the external history of the 
Norman empire and with the constitutional develop- 
ments to which it gave rise, that we have had no time to 
examine the society and culture of Normandy in its 
flourishing period of imperialism. And we have been 

^ William the Conqueror, p. 2. 



NORMANDY AND FRANCE 147 

concentrating our attention so exclusively on the do- 
minions of the Plantagenets that we have left out of 
view that greater Normandy to the south which con- 
stitutes one of the most brilliant chapters of Norman 
achievement and one of the most fascinating subjects 
of European history. These topics will be the themes of 
the three remaining lectures. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The best account of the downfall of the Norman empire is Powicke, 
The Loss of Normandy, where abundant references will be found to 
further material. The general narratives of Adams, Davis, and Ram- 
say may also be consulted, as well as Miss Norgate, John Lackland 
(London, 1902). For the French side see Luchaire, in Lavisse, His- 
toire de France, iii, i. The fullest treatment of relations between the 
Plantagenets and France, down to 1199, is A. Cartellieri, Philipp 
IL August (Leipzig, 1899-1910), supplemented by his Richard 
Lowenherz im heiligen Lande, in Historische Zeitschrift, ci, pp. 1-27 
(1908), and Philipp II. August und der Zusammenbruch des angiovin- 
ischen Reiches (Leipzig, 1913). For the controversy concerning John's 
condemnation by the court of Philip, see Gross, Sources and Litera- 
ture, nos. 2829, 2833. Characterizations of Richard and John by 
Stubbs will be found in his Historical Introductions, pp. 315^., 439^. 
J. Lehmann, Johann ohne Land (Berlin, 1904), is more favorable 
to John. The biography of the Young King is traced by P. C. E. 
Hodgson, Jung Heinrich, Konig von England (Jena, 1906). 

There is no general work on the English occupation of Normandy in 
the fifteenth century; the scattered monographs are mentioned in 
Prentout, La Normandie, pp. 7 1-76. Something may be expected from 
the continuation of the late J. H. Wylie's work on the reign of Henry V. 



VI 

NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 

IN turning from the general course of Norman his- 
tory in the eleventh and twelfth centuries to ex- 
amine Norman life and culture in this period, we 
encounter the difficulties inherent in any attempt to 
cut a cross-section of human society in an age which 
was not conscious of being a society and has left us for 
the description of itself only raw materials of a fragmen- 
tary and uneven sort. The chroniclers confine them- 
selves almost entirely to external events, the charters 
deal chiefly with land and boundaries and rights over 
the land, much of the literature is theological commen- 
tary or rhetorical commonplace which reflects nothing 
of the age in which it was written ; what is lacking in all 
is the concrete detail of daily life from which alone social 
and economic conditions and even government itself can 
be understood. And when we have pieced together as 
best we may some notions of Normandy in this period, 
our knowledge of the parallel conditions in other regions 
is often so inadequate that we cannot be certain how far 
our results are characteristic of Normandy, how far 
typical of the time, or, because of the scattered nature of 
our material, how far they may be merely individual and 
isolated. Much of the social history of the Middle Ages 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 149 

is still unwritten; for lack of evidence much can never 
be written. Until the available sources have been more 
fully explored, nothing beyond a provisional sketch can 
be attempted. 

Fortunately for our purposes, the fundamental struc- 
ture of society in the earlier Middle Ages was exceed- 
ingly simple. There were three classes, those who 
fought, those who labored, and those who prayed, cor- 
responding respectively to the nobles, the peasants, and 
the clergy. Created by the simple needs of the feudal 
age, this primitive division of labor was even declared 
an institution of divine origin and necessary to the har- 
monious life of man. It seemed right and natural that 
the nobles should defend the country and maintain 
order, the clergy lead men to salvation, the peasants 
support by their labor these two beneficent classes, as 
well as themselves. As an ideal of social organization, 
this system of classes is open to obvious objections, not 
the least of which is the persistent killing and plundering 
of the peasants by the class whose function it was to 
protect and defend them ; but as a description of actual 
conditions, it expresses very well the facts of the case. 

With respect to the fighting class, it is characteristic 
t)f the Norman habit of order and organization that the 
military service of the nobles was early defined with 
more system and exactness in Normandy than in the 
neighboring countries of northern France. We have al- 



150 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

ready seen that at a period well before 1066 the amount 
of service due from the great lords to the duke had been 
fixed in rough units of five or multiples of five, and these 
again subdivided among their vassals and attached to 
specific pieces of land which were hence called knights* 
fees, an arrangement which the Normans carried to Eng- 
land and probably to Sicily as well. By 1172, when a 
comprehensive list was first drawn up, subinfeudation 
had produced about 1500 knights' fees in Normandy, 
the largest holders being the bishop of Bayeux and the 
earl of Leicester with 120, the count of Ponthieu with 
III, and Earl Giffard with 103. From these the class of 
fully armed knights reached down to the holders of 
small fractions of a knight's fee, all however serving 
with the full armor which in course of time came to 
mark them off as nobles from the vavassors, or free sol- 
diers, whose equipment was less complete and whose 
service tended to take the form of castle guard and simi- 
lar duties. Quite early also custom had defined other 
characteristic features of the feudal service in Nor- 
mandy, such as the period of forty days, the limitation 
of the obligation to the frontiers of the duchy, and the 
incidents of wardship and marriage, deductions from 
feudal principles which were here carried to their logical 
conclusions. 

The symbol of the authority of the military class, the 
outward and visible sign of feudalism, was the castle, 
where the lord resided and from which he exercised his 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 151 

authority over his fief. Originating in the period of 
anarchy which accompanied the dissolution of the 
Prankish empire and the invasions of the ninth and 
tenth centuries, the castle spread over northern France 
as feudalism spread, and was introduced into England 
by the Normans when they here established their feudal 
state. The earliest castles of Normandy and of England 
were not, however, the massive stone donjons which 
Freeman peopled with devils and evil men. With some 
exceptions, of which the Tower of London is the most 
noteworthy, these 'hateful structures' were built of 
wood and surrounded by a stockade, surmounting an 
artificial mound, or motte, thrown up from the deep moat 
at its base. A great drawbridge, cleated so that horses 
should not slip on the steep incline, led from the farther 
side of the moat directly to the second story of the tower, 
of which the ground floor, used only for stores and the 
custody of prisoners, had no entrance from without. 
Fortresses of this type have naturally left nothing be- 
hind them save the outlines of their mounds and moats, 
but they are well known from contemporary descrip- 
tions and are clearly discernible in the Bayeux Tapestry, 
which gives rude pictures of the strongholds of Dol, 
Rennes, Dinan, and Bayeux, and shows a stockaded 
mound in actual process of construction at Hastings. 
The heavy timbers of these lofty block-houses offered 
stout resistance to battering rams, but they were always 
in great danger from fire, and wood was replaced by 



152 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

stone in the course of the twelfth century, to which 
belong the 'stern square towers' which still survive in 
Normandy and England, as well as the earliest examples 
of the more defensible round keeps and square keeps 
flanked with round towers. Whether of wood or stone, 
the donjon was a stern place, built for strength rather 
than for comfort, and bending the life of those within it 
to the imperious necessities of defence. Space was at a 
premium, windows were few and small, — sometimes 
only a single window and a single room to each story, -^ 
trap-doors and ladders often did the work of stairways, 
and from the wooden castles fires were usually excluded. 
Nevertheless the donjons were not, as was once sup- 
posed, mere "towers of refuge used only in time of war," 
but "were the permanent residences of the nobles of 
the eleventh and twelfth centuries." ^ Only toward the 
close of this period do the outer buildings develop, so as 
to give something of the room and convenience de- 
manded by the rising standard of comfort; only in the 
thirteenth century do the more spacious castles without 
keeps begin to make their appearance. 

It is significant of the progress made by the ducal 
authority in Normandy that by the time of William the 
Conqueror definite restrictions had been placed upon 
the creation of these strongholds of local power and 
resistance. Except with the duke's license no one could 
build a castle, or erect a fortress on a rock or an island, 

^ Armitage, Early Norman Castles of the British Isles, p. 359. 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 153 

or even dig a fosse in the open country so deep that the 
earth could not be thrown out from the bottom without 
artificial aid, while palisades were required to be built 
in a simple line and without alures or special works of 
defence. When the duke desired, he might also place 
garrisons in his barons' castles and demand hostages for 
their loyalty. These principles, which were applied also 
in England, were of course often difficult to enforce, and 
they were supplemented in the twelfth century by the 
development of a great system of ducal castles, secured 
partly by enlarging and strengthening the older for- 
tresses of Rouen, Caen, Falaise, and Argentan, partly, 
as we have already seen, by new strongholds on the 
frontiers. Powicke has shown us how these castles be- 
came the chief administrative centres in the reigns of 
Henry II and Richard, and how the royal letters and 
accounts reveal their many-sided activity in the busy 
days of peace as well as in the more strenuous times of 
war.^ Under chdtelains who were royal officers rather 
than feudal vassals, with garrisons of mercenaries and 
retinues of knights and Serjeants, clerks and chaplains 
and personal servants, they foreshadow the ultimate 
replacement of baronial donjons by a royal bureaucracy. 
It is doubtless because of the dominant position of the 
duke that Normandy is less rich than some other parts 
of France in picturesque types of feudal lords or vivid 
episodes of feudal conflicts. When they go beyond the 
^ The Loss of Normandy, pp. 298 ff. 



154 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

affairs of the church, the Norman chroniclers are prone 
to concentrate their attention upon the deeds of the du- 
cal house, and their accounts of the great vassals tend to 
be dry and genealogical. The chief exception is Orderi- 
cus Vitalis, whose theme and geographical position lead 
him to treat at length the long anarchy under Robert 
Curthose and the incessant conflicts of the great lords 
his neighbors on the southern border, the houses of 
Bell^me, Grentemaisnil, Conches, and Breteuil. In the 
main it is a dreary tale of surprises and sieges, of treach- 
ery and captivity and sudden death, relieved from time 
to time by brighter episodes — the lady Isabel of 
Conches sitting in the great hall as the young men of the 
castle tell their dreams ; the daily battle for bread around 
the oven at the siege of Courcy ; the table spread and the 
pots seething on the coals for the lord and lady of Saint- 
C^neri who never came back; the man of Saint-Evroul 
who, by the saint's aid, walks unharmed out of custody 
at Domfront; the marvellous vision of the army of 
knights and ladies in torment which appeared to the 
priest of Bonneval. 

With these episodes of Norm^an feudalism It is Inter- 
esting to compare the picture of Anglo-Norman society 
a hundred years later which we find in that unique piece 
of feudal biography, the History of William the Marshal. 
Companion to the Young King and witness of the final 
shame of Henry II, pilgrim to Jerusalem and Cologne, 
advanced to positions of trust under Richard and John, 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 155 

earl of Strlguil and Pembroke and regent of England 
under Henry III, the Earl Marshal stood in close rela- 
tions to the chief men and movements of his day. His 
biographer, however, does not let himself wander to tell 
of others' deeds, and while his work contains material 
of much importance for the general history of the time, 
its chief value lies in its reflection of the life of the age 
and its faithful portrait of the man himself — soldier of 
fortune, gentleman-adventurer if you will, but always 
loyal, honorable, straightforward, and true, by the 
standards of his time a man without fear and without 
reproach. Brought up in the Norman castle of Tancar- 
ville, the Marshal, like the Young King his master, 
became passionately addicted to tournaments, par emi- 
nence the knightly sport of the Middle Ages, which 
made hunting and other pastimes seem tame and fur- 
nished the best preparation for real war, since, as an 
English chronicler tells us, in order to shine in war a 
knight "must have seen his own blood flow, have had 
his jaw crack under the blow of his adversary, have 
been dashed to the earth with such force as to feel the 
weight of his foe, and unhorsed twenty times he must 
twenty times have retrieved his failures, more set than 
ever on the combat." Unknown to England before the 
reign of Richard, these manly sports flourished most of 
all in France, the country of chivalry and feats of arms, 
and for several years we follow the Marshal from combat 
to combat through Normandy and Maine, Champagne 



156 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

and the Ile-de- France, so that his renown spread from 
Poitou to the Rhine. At one period in his Hfe he tour- 
neyed every fortnight. The tournaments of his day, 
however, were not the elegant and fashionable affairs of 
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which the word is 
apt to call to our minds, assemblages of beauty as well 
as of prowess, held in special enclosures before crowded 
galleries, with elaborate rules respecting armor and 
weapons and the conditions of conflict. On the contrary, 
they were fought like battles, in the open, with all the 
arms and methods of war and all its manoeuvres and 
ferocity of attack ; indeed they differed from war mainly 
in being voluntary and limited to a single day. After one 
series of such thunderous encounters the Marshal was 
found in a smithy, his head on the anvil and the smith 
working with hammer and pincers to remove his bat- 
tered helmet. In a great tournament at Lagni three 
thousand knights are said to have been engaged, of 
which the Young King furnished eighty. Knights 
fought for honor and fame and for sheer joy of combat ; 
they fought also, we must remember, for the horses and 
armor and ransoms of the captives. In a Norman tour- 
nament the Marshal captured ten knights and twelve 
horses. Between Pentecost and Lent of one year their 
clerks calculated that he and his companion had taken 
prisoners three hundred knights, without counting 
horses and harness; yet he seems to have preserved the 
golden mean between the careless largesse of the Young 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 157 

King and the merely mercenary motives of the large 
number who frequented tournaments for the sake of 
gain. 

Concerning the great agricultural class upon which 
the whole social system rested, our information is of a 
scattered and uneven sort. The man with the hoe did 
not interest the mediaeval chronicler, and he did not 
gain a voice of his own in the period which we have un- 
der review. The annals of the time are indeed careful to 
record the drouths and floods, the seasons of plague, pes- 
tilence, and famine of which Normandy seems to have 
had its share, but they tell us nothing of the effects of 
these evils upon the class which they most directly con- 
cerned ; while the charters, leases, and manorial records 
from which our knowledge of the peasants must be built 
up give us in this period isolated and unrelated facts. 
Moreover our information is confined almost entirely to 
the lands of churches and monasteries, where agriculture 
was likely to be more progressive because of their closer 
relations to the world outside. Normandy was a fertile 
country, and, so far as we can judge, its agricultural 
population fared well as compared with that of other 
regions. Certainly there is here, after the eleventh cen- 
tury, no trace of serfdom or the freeing of serfs, and 
the free position of its farming class distinguished the 
duchy from most of the lands of northern France. In 
other respects it is hard to discern important differences 



158 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

between the Norman peasants and those of other re- 
gions. After the suppression of an insurrection at the 
beginning of this century, we do not hear of any general 
rising of the Norman peasants, parallel to those risings 
which make a sad and futile chapter in the annals of 
many parts of Europe in the Middle Ages. It was, how- 
ever, a local revolt of the thirteenth century on the 
lands of the monks of Mont-Saint- Michel that brought 
out one of the best descriptions of life on a Norman 
manor, the Conte des Vilains de Verson,^ and, while it is 
a bit late for our purpose, it is confirmed by documen- 
tary evidence, and may well serve as an illustration of 
the obligations of the agricultural class : — 

In June the peasants must cut and pile the hay and carry it 
to the manor house. In August they must reap and carry in 
the convent's grain ; their own grain lies exposed to wind and 
rain while they hunt out the assessor of the champart and 
carry his share to his barn. On the Nativity of the Virgin the 
villain owes the pork-due, one pig in eight; at St. Denis' 
day the cens; at Christmas the fowl, fine and good, and there- 
after the grain-due of two setters of barley and three quarters 
of wheat ; on Palm Sunday the sheep-due ; at Easter he must 
plow, sow and harrow. When there is building the tenant 
must bring stone and serve the masons ; he must also haul the 
convent's wood for two deniers a day. If he sells his land, he 
owes the lord a thirteenth of its value; if he marries his 
daughter outside the seigniory, he pays a fine. He must grind 
his grain at the seigniorial mill and bake his bread at the 
seigniorial oven, where the customary charges do not satisfy 
the attendants, who grumble and threaten to leave his bread 
unbaked. 

^ Printed by Delisle, Etudes sur la classe agricole, pp. 668 Jf. 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 159 

So long as mediaeval society remained almost en- 
tirely agricultural there was no need of adapting its 
organization to other classes than those which have just 
been described. In course of time, however, the growth 
of industry and commerce, very slow before the eleventh 
century, but rapid and constant in the period during 
and after the Crusades, as may be seen by the large 
number of markets and fairs in Normandy, created a 
new class of dwellers in towns who demanded recogni- 
tion of their peculiar character and status. By reason of 
the nature of their occupations they sought release from 
the seigniorial system, with its forced labor, its frequent 
payments, and its vexatious restrictions upon freedom of 
movement and freedom of buying and selling; and as 
their economic needs drew them together into industrial 
and commercial centres of population, they developed a 
collective feeling and demanded collective treatment. 
/They asked, not, as has sometimes been said, for the 
overthrow of the feudal system, but for a place within it 
which should recognize their peculiar economic and 
political interests; and the result of their efforts, when 
fully successful, was to form what has been called a col- 
lective seigniory, standing as a body in the relation of 
vassal to lord or king, and owing the obligations of hom- 
age, fealty, and communal military service. But while 
not anti-feudal in theory, this movement was often anti- 
feudal in practice, so far at least as the rights and priv- 
ileges of the immediate overlord were concerned, and it 



i6o NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

led to friction and often to armed contests with bishop, 
baron, or king. In Normandy, significantly, we find 
none of those communal revolts which meet us through- 
out the north of France and even as near as LeMans; 
the towns are always subject to the ultimate authority 
of the duke, whose domanial rights were considerable 
even in the episcopal cities and who favored those forms 
of urban development which strengthened the military 
resources of the duchy. The early history of the Norman 
towns is one of the most obscure chapters in Norman 
history, but it indicates a variety of influences which do 
not fit into any one of the many theories of municipal 
origins which have been the subject of so much learned 
controversy. Some towns were originally fortified 
places, like the baronial stronghold of Breteuil or Henry 
Ts fortresses of Verneuil, Nonancourt, and Pontorson 
on the southern border. Some took advantage of the 
protection of a monastery, as in the case of F6camp or 
the hourgs of the abbot and abbess of Caen. The great 
ports, like Barfleur and Dieppe, obviously owed their 
importance to trade, and it was trade which created the 
prosperity of the chief towns of the duchy, Rouen and 
Caen. However developed, the Norman municipal type 
exerted no small influence upon urban organization : the 
laws of Breteuil became the model for Norman founda- 
tions on the Welsh border and in Ireland ; the ^tahlisse- 
ments of Rouen were copied in the principal towns of 
western France, — Tours and Poitiers, Angouleme and 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE i6i 

La Rochelle, even to Gascon Bayonne on the Spanish 
frontier. 

If we take as an illustration of this development the 
principal Norman town, Rouen, we find no evidence 
regarding Its institutions before the twelfth century, 
while its organization as a commune dates from the 
reign of Henry II and probably from the year 1 171. The 
fundamental law, or Etablissements, which Rouen then 
received and which became the model for communal 
government elsewhere in Normandy, constitutes a body 
of one hundred peers who meet once a fortnight for judi- 
cial and other business and who choose from their num- 
ber each year the twelve echevins, or magistrates, and 
the twelve councillors who sit with the echevins to form 
the council of juris. Besides these boards, which are 
typical of mediaeval town constitutions, the peers also 
nominate three candidates for the office of mayor, but 
the choice among these Is made by the king, and the 
greater authority of the mayor in this system Is evi- 
dently designed to secure more effective royal control. 
It is the mayor who leads the communal militia, receives 
the revenues, supervises the execution of sentences, and 
presides over all meetings of magistrates and boards. 
The administration of justice through its own magis- 
trates is perhaps the most valued privilege of the com- 
mune, but the gravest crimes are reserved for the cog- 
nizance of royal officers, and the presence of the king or 
a session of his assize Is sufficient to suspend all com- 



162 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

munal powers of justice. In a state like the Norman the 
limits of municipal self-government are clear. 

The importance of Rouen as a commercial and indus- 
trial centre was not, however, dependent upon its form 
of government. Its ancient gild of cordwainers had been 
recognized by Henry I and Stephen, its trading privi- 
leges were confirmed in one of the earliest charters of 
Henry II. Save for a single ship yearly from Cherbourg, 
the merchants of Rouen had a monopoly of trade with 
Ireland ; in England they could go through all the mar- 
kets of the land; in London they were quit of all pay- 
ments save for wine and great fish and had exclusive 
rights in their special wharf of Dowgate. Later in 
Henry's reign they were even freed of all dues through- 
out his dominions. Only a citizen might take a ship- 
load of merchandise past Rouen or bring wine to a cellar 
in the town. Besides the great trade in wine we hear of 
dealings in leather, cloth, grain, and especially salt and 
salt fish. Under Henry II the ducal rights over the town 
were worth annually more than 3,000 livres. Apart 
from their share in this general prosperity, the citizens 
had special exemptions in the matter of duties and tolls 
on goods which they brought in, while the freedom from 
feudal restraints which characterized all burgage ten- 
ures put a premium upon their holding of property. 
Besides the privileged areas belonging to the cathedral 
and the neighboring abbeys, a foothold in the city was 
valued by others: the bishop of Bayeux had a town 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 163 

house ; the abbot of Caen prized a cellar and an exemp- 
tion from wine-dues which he owed to the generosity of 
William the Conqueror; the clerks and chaplains of the 
king's household took advantage of their opportunities 
to acquire rents and houses at Rouen, as well as at 
London and Winchester. 

Unfortunately no one has left us in this period a de- 
scription of the busy life of Rouen such as Fitz Stephen 
has given of contemporary London, and it is only with 
the imagination that we can bring before our eyes the 
ships at their wharves with their bales of marten-skins 
from Ireland and casks of wine from Burgundy and the 
south, the fullers and dyers, millers and tanners plying 
their trades along the Eau de Robec, the burgesses 
trafficking in the streets and the cathedral close, the 
royal clerks and Serjeants hastening on their master's 
business. Still more to be regretted is the disappearance 
of those material remains of its ancient splendor which 
until the last century retained the form and flavor, if not 
the actual wood and stone, of the mediaeval city. To-day 
scarcely anything survives above ground of the Rouen of 
the dukes — of its walls and gates, destroyed by Philip 
Augustus, of the castle by the river, with the tower from 
which Henry I threw the traitor Conan and the great 
hall and rooms renewed by his grandson, of the stone 
bridge of the Empress Matilda, of the royal park and 
palace across the Seine at Quevilly. Only the great St. 
Romain's tower of the cathedral and an early bit of the 



i64 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

abbey-church of Saint-Ouen still body forth the un- 
broken continuity of the Norman past. 

The Norman church throughout the period of our 
study stands in the closest relation to the general condi- 
tions of Norman society. The monasteries and churches 
of the region had been almost completely wiped out by 
the northern invasions, and while the Northmen soon 
adopted the religion of their new neighbors, it was 
many years before ecclesiastical life and discipline again 
reached the level of the other dioceses of France. As 
late as the year looi a Burgundian monk reported that 
there was hardly a priest in Normandy who could read 
the lessons or say his psalms correctly. The prelates led 
the life of the great feudal families of which they were 
members, distributing the property of the church as 
fiefs to their friends or gifts to their numerous progeny ; 
and the lower clergy, for the most part married, sought 
to pass on their benefices to their children. In the course 
of the eleventh century, however, more canonical stand- 
ards began to prevail, largely through the influence of 
the monks of Cluny. Older foundations like Fecamp 
were renewed, and the Norman lords soon began to vie 
with one another in the endowment of new monastic 
establishments. To the half-century which preceded the 
Conquest of England we can trace the beginnings of 
twenty important monasteries and six nunneries, not 
counting priories and smaller foundations, a movement 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 165 

for which contemporaries could find no parallel short of 
the palmy days of monasticism in Roman Egypt. In 
course of time the monastic ideal reacted upon the secu- 
lar clergy, and the monastic schools raised the level of 
learning throughout the duchy, until provincial councils 
succeeded in establishing the celibacy of the priesthood 
and the stricter discipline of Rome. In all this move- 
ment for reform the dukes took a leading part, inviting 
the reformers to their courts, aiding in the foundation 
and restoration of cloisters, and lending their strong 
support to the efforts for moral improvement in the sec- 
ular clergy. They also asserted their supremacy over 
the Norman church, presiding in its councils, revising 
the judgments of its courts, appointing and investing its 
bishops and abbots. Moreover, while ready to cooperate 
with the moral ideas of the Papacy, they resisted all 
attempts at papal interference in Norman affairs. When 
Alexander II sought to restore an abbot whom William 
the Conqueror had deposed, the duke replied that he 
would gladly receive papal legates in matters of faith 
and doctrine, but would hang to the tallest oak of the 
nearest forest any monk who dared to resist his author- 
ity in his own land. William's resistance was equally 
firm in the case of Gregory VII, who failed completely 
in his efforts at direct action in William's dominions. 
Nowhere on the Continent, concludes Bohmer,^ was 
there at this time a country where the prince and his 
^ Kirche und Staat, p. 41. 



i66 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

bishops were so energetic in the suppression of simony 
and violations of clerical vows ; nowhere was the church 
so completely subject to the secular government. 

The most prominent figure in the Norman church of 
the eleventh century, Odo, for nearly fifty years bishop 
of Bayeux, was far from fulfilling the stricter ideal of a 
prelate's life. Half-brother of the Conqueror through 
their mother Arlette, he received the bishopric as a fam- 
ily gift at the tender age of fourteen and became thereby 
one of the greatest princes of Normandy. His hundred 
and twenty knights' fees furnished him a body of power- 
ful vassals ; his demesne gave him manors and forests for 
the support of his household, fuel for his fires and reeds 
and rushes for his hall, rents and tithes at Caen and the 
monopoly of the mill at Bayeux, tolls and fines and 
market rights which produced a considerable income in 
ready money. For the invasion of England he is said to 
have offered a hundred ships, and he took an active part 
in the battle of Hastings, swinging a huge mace in place 
of spear and sword, since the shedding of blood was for- 
bidden to an ecclesiastic. In the distribution which fol- 
lowed, Odo received large estates in the southeast, as 
well as the earldom of Kent and the custody of Dover 
Castle, and he seems to have ruled his lands with a 
heavy hand both as earl and as regent in William's 
absence. It even became his ambition to succeed the 
mighty Hildebrand as Pope, and he had already spent 
considerable sums at Rome when William, accusing 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 167 

him of tyranny and oppression, put him in prison, an- 
swering his assertion of ecclesiastical privilege with the 
statement that he imprisoned, not the bishop of Bayeux, 
but the earl of Kent. There he languished for five years 
till William on his death-bed, against his better judg- 
ment, released him for ten years more of rule in Nor- 
mandy. Yet, though Odo's eulogists admit that he was 
given overmuch to worldly ambition, the lusts of the 
flesh and the pride of life, they tell us of his vigorous 
defence of his clergy by arms as well as by eloquence, of 
the young men of promise whom he supported in the 
schools of Lorraine and other centres of foreign learning, 
of the journey to Jerusalem on which he met his death, 
of the great cathedral which he built in honor of the 
Mother of God and adorned with gold and silver and 
probably with the very Bayeux Tapestry which is the 
chief surviving monument of his magnificence. 

With the twelfth century the type changes. To the 
monastic historian a bishop like Philip d'Harcourt, like- 
wise of the see of Bayeux, may appear wise in the wis- 
dom of this world which is foolishness with God,^ but his 
wisdom shows itself in frequent journeys to Rome and 
persistent litigation in the duke's courts, not in battles 
and sieges, and he owes his appointment to his influence 
as Stephen's chancellor and not to blood relationship. 
Arnulf of Lisieux is another royal officer, versatile, in- 
sinuating, shifty, anything but truthful if we may be- 

^ Robert of Torigni (ed. Delisle), i, p. 344. 



i68 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

lieve his fellow-bishops, but proud of his Latin style and 
his knowledge of law and prodigal of letters to the Pope. 
Their contemporaries continue to owe their promotion 
to service as chaplains or chancellors to the king, but 
they also have an eye toward Rome and must be canon- 
ists as well as secular officials. The contrast between 
Becket the king's chancellor and Becket the archbishop 
of Canterbury is symptomatic of the new age, although 
the conflict to which it led affected Normandy but indi- 
rectly. Relations with the lay power which once rested 
on local Norman custom come to be formulated in the 
sharper terms of the canon law of the universal church ; 
appeals to Rome and instructions from Rome increase 
rapidly in volume and importance; the Norman clergy 
attend assemblies of the clergy of neighboring lands; 
and by the end of the Plantagenet period the Norman 
church is ready to be absorbed into the church of 
France. 

Respecting the daily life and conversation of the ca- 
thedral and parish clergy the twelfth century is silent, 
save for the condemnations of particular evils in the 
councils of the province. From the middle of the thir- 
teenth century, however, Normandy furnishes us, in the 
diary of visitations kept by the archbishop of Rouen, 
Eudes Rigaud, a picture of manners and morals which 
for authenticity and fulness of detail has probably no 
parallel in mediaeval Europe; and one is tempted to carry 
back two or three generations his description of the 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 169 

canons of Rouen wandering about the cathedral and 
chatting with women during service, the nuns of Saint- 
Sauveur with their pet dogs and squirrels, and those of 
other convents celebrating the festival of the Innocents 
with dance and song and unseemly mirth, the monks of 
Bocherville without a Bible among them to read. It is 
hard to believe that there was anything new in the dis- 
orders which this upright archbishop chronicles place by 
place and year by year — ignorance, drunkenness, and 
incontinence among the parish and cathedral clergy, lax 
discipline, loose administration, and neglect of learning 
in the monasteries and nunneries. What was old in the 
time of Rabelais was probably old in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, and there is abundant evidence of abuses in the 
mediaeval church, in Normandy and elsewhere. What 
we want most to know is how general these abuses were 
and how many there were to counteract them like Chau- 
cer's * povre persoun of a toun,' who taught " Cristes lore 
and his apostles twelve," but first "folwed it himselve." 
Data of this sort are always lacking in sufficient amount 
for any moral statistics, and they must be supplemented 
and interpreted by the evidence which has reached us of 
popular piety and devotion. Such are the processions of 
priest and people throughout the diocese to the cathe- 
drals at Whitsuntide, the miraculous cures of disease by 
Our Lady of Coutances, and the extraordinary burst of 
contrition, religious enthusiasm, and zeal for good works 
which broke forth at the building of the spires of Char- 



170 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

tres in 1145 'and spread throughout the length and 
breadth of Normandy. Forming associations of those 
who confessed their sins, received penance, and recon- 
ciled themselves with their enemies, the faithful har- 
nessed themselves to carts filled with stone, timber, 
food, and whatever might help the churches which they 
sought to serve, and drew them long miles until they 
seemed to fulfill the saying of the prophet, "the spirit 
of the living creature was in the wheels." The abbot of 
Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, to whom we owe our fullest ac- 
count of the movement, tells us of these processions : ^ 

When they halt on the road, nothing is heard but the con- 
fession of sins and pure and suppliant prayer to God to obtain 
pardon. At the voice of the priests preaching peace hatred is 
forgotten, discord thrown aside, debts are remitted, the unity 
of hearts is established. But if any one is so far advanced in 
evil as to be unwilling to pardon an offender or obey the pious 
admonition of the priest, his offering is instantly thrown from 
the wagon as impure, and he himself is ignominiously and 
shamefully excluded from the society of the holy. There, as a 
result of the prayers of the faithful, one may see the sick and 
infirm rise whole from their wagons, the dumb open their 
mouths to the praise of God, the possessed recover a sane 
mind. The priests who preside over each wagon are seen 
exhorting all to repentance, confession, lamentations, and the 
resolution of a better life, while old and young and even little 
children, prostrate on the ground, call on the Mother of God 
and utter to her, from the depth of their hearts, sobs and 
sighs, with words of confession and praise. . . . After the 
faithful resume their march to the sound of trumpets and the 

* The text is printed in the Bibliothhque de I'Ecole des Chartes, xxi, 
pp. 120/. 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 171 

display of banners, the journey is so easy that no obstacle can 
retard it. . . . When they have reached the church, they ar- 
range the wagons about it Hke a spiritual camp, and during 
the whole of the following night the army of the Lord keeps 
watch with psalms and canticles, tapers and lamps are lighted 
on each wagon, and the relics of the saints are brought for the 
relief of the sick and the weak, for whom priests and people in 
procession implore the clemency of the Lord and his Blessed 
Mother. If healing does not follow at once, they cast aside 
their garments, men and women alike, and drag themselves 
from altar to altar . . . begging the priests to scourge them 
for their sins. 

At the close of the Angevin period there were in Nor- 
mandy something like eighty monasteries and convents, 
not counting the numerous cells and priories, as, for ex- 
ample, the various dependencies of the great abbey of 
Marmoutier at Tours. These were chiefly Benedictine 
foundations, though the newer movements of the Cister- 
cians, Premonstratensians, and Augustlnians were well 
represented, the only distinctively Norman order, the 
Congregation of Savigny, having been early absorbed 
by the Cistercians. The oldest of these establishments 
were at the two extremes of the duchy, Mont-Saint- 
Michel at one end and Jumieges, Saint- Wandrille, Saint- 
Ouen and Fecamp at the other; but the distribution was 
speedily equalized, and the great abbeys of the centre, 
Bee and Caen and Saint- Evroul, were soon known 
throughout Europe. The conquest of England opened a 
new field for monastic influence: twenty Norman mon- 
asteries had received lands in England by the time of the 



172 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

Domesday survey, and the number was considerably 
greater when the holdings of alien priories were confis- 
cated at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Mont- 
Saint-Michel, for example, had a priory in Cornwall as 
well as one at LeMans, and its lands in Maine, Brit- 
tany, and various parts of England did not allay its 
desire for more whenever opportunity offered. For a pe- 
riod of five years, from 1155 to 11 59 inclusive, we have 
a record of the activity of its abbot, Robert of Torigni, 
in relation to the monastery's property, and a very in- 
structive record it is. It takes him to England and the 
Channel Islands, to the king's assizes at Gavrai, Dom- 
front, Caen, and Carentan, to the courts of the bishops 
of Avranches, Coutances, and Bayeux, and to that of the 
archbishop at Rouen ; proving his rights, compromising, 
exchanging, purchasing, receiving by gift or royal char- 
ter; picking up here a bit of land, there a mill, a garden, 
a vineyard, a tithe, a church, to add to the lands and 
rents, mills and forests, markets and churches and feudal 
rights which he already possessed. There are also vari- 
ous examples of loans on mortgage, for the monasteries 
were the chief source of rural credit in this period, and 
as the land with its revenues passed at once into the 
possession of the mortgagee, the security was absolute, 
the annual return sure, and the chances of ultimate 
acquisition of the property considerable. With the 
resources of the monastery during his administration of 
thirty-two years Abbot Robert was able to increase the 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 173 

number of monks from forty to sixty, to enlarge the 
conventual buildings, in which he entertained the kings 
of England and of France, and to add a great fagade 
to the abbey-church, a contribution to the massive pile 
of the Marvel which we are no longer privileged to 
behold. He also labored for the intellectual side of the 
monastery's life, restoring the library and enlarging 
it by a hundred and twenty volumes, and composing 
a variety of works on historical subjects which make 
him the chief authority for half a century of Norman 
history. 

There is, however, not much concerning monasteries 
in Robert's chronicle, and even his special essay on the 
history of the Norman abbeys is confined to externals. 
Perhaps he was cumbered about much serving; more 
probably he saw nothing worthy of the historian's pen 
in the inner life of the institution. When the abbot had 
a new altar dedicated or renewed the reliquaries of St. 
Aubert and St. Lawrence, that was worth setting down, 
but the daily routine of observance was the same at 
Mont-Saint-Michel as in the other Benedictine foun- 
dations, and has remained substantially unchanged 
through the centuries of monastic history. At any rate 
no monkish Boswell has done for Normandy what Joce- 
lin of Brakelonde did for contemporary England in that 
vivid picture of life at Bury St. Edmund's which Carlyle 
has made familiar in his Past and Present. A monk of 
Saint-Evroul, it is true, did a much greater thing in the 



174 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

Historia Ecclesiastica of Ordericus Vitalis, but he was an 
historian, not a Boswell, and his experience of half a 
century of monastic life lies embedded deep in the five 
solid volumes of this wide-ranging work. One phase of 
the religious life of mediaeval monasteries is admirably 
illustrated in Normandy, namely the mortuary rolls of 
the members and heads of religious houses. It early 
became the custom, not only to say prayers regularly 
for the departed members and benefactors of such a 
community, but to seek the suffrages of associated com- 
munities or of all the faithful. To that end an encyclical 
was prepared setting forth the virtues of the deceased 
and was carried by a special messenger from convent 
to convent, each establishment indicating the prayers 
which had there been said and adding the names of the 
brothers for whom prayers were solicited in return. The 
two most considerable documents of this sort which 
have come down to us are of Norman origin, the roll of 
Matilda, the first abbess of Holy Trinity at Caen, and 
that of Vitalis, founder of the Congregation of Savigny, 
which belongs to the year 1122 and is the oldest manu- 
script of this type extant in its original form, with all the 
quaint local varieties in execution. Each of these was 
carried throughout the greater part of England and of 
northern and central France, reaching in the first case 
two hundred and fifty-three different monasteries and 
churches, in the second two hundred and eight, and as 
the replies were often made at some length in prose or 



; NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 175 

verse, they constitute a curious monument of the con- 
dition of culture in the places visited. 

If the impulse toward religious reform in Normandy 
was of Burgundian origin, intellectual stimulus came 
chiefly from Italy. The two principal figures in the intel- 
lectual life of the duchy in the eleventh century, Lan- 
franc and Anselm, were Italians: Lanfranc distinguished 
for his mastery of law, Lombard, Roman, and canon, 
for the great school which he founded at Bee, and for his 
labors in the field of ecclesiastical statesmanship; An- 
selm his pupil and his successor as prior of Bee and as 
archbishop of Canterbury, remarkable as a teacher, still 
more remarkable as one of the foremost theologians of 
the Western Church. "Under the first six dukes," we 
are told, "there was hardly any one in Normandy who 
gave himself to liberal studies, and there was no master 
till God, who provides for all, sent Lanfranc to these 
shores." Teaching first at Avranches, Lanfranc estab- 
lished himself at Bee in 1042, and his school soon drew 
students from the remotest parts of France and sent 
them out in all directions to positions of honor and in- 
fluence. Abbots like Gilbert Crispin of Westminster, 
bishops like St. Ives of Chartres, primates of Rouen and 
Canterbury, even a pope in the person of Alexander II, 
figure on the long honor-roll of Lanfranc's pupils at 
Bee. For an institution of such renown, however, we 
know singularly little concerning the actual course and 



176 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

methods of study at Bee, and its historian is compelled 
to fall back upon a general description of the trivium and 
quadrivium which made up the ordinary monastic cur- 
riculum. We do not even know whether Lanfranc actu- 
ally taught the subject of law of which he was past mas- 
ter, though we can be sure that theology and philosophy 
had a large place under Anselm, and that the school 
must have felt the influence of the large part which its 
leaders took in the theological discussions of their time. 
An important form of activity in the monasteries of the 
period was the copying of manuscripts, a sure safeguard 
against that idleness which St. Benedict declared the 
enemy of the soul. Lanfranc sat up a good part of the 
night correcting the daily copies of the monks of Bee; 
the first abbot of Saint-Evroul had an edifying tale of an 
erring brother who had secured his salvation by volun- 
tarily copying a holy book of such dimensions that the 
angels who produced it on his behalf at the judgment 
were able to check it off letter by letter against his sins 
and leave at the end a single letter in his favor! The 
monks of Saint-Evroul prided themselves on their Latin 
style, especially their Latin verse, and on their chants 
which were sung even in distant Calabria; yet the best 
example of their training, the historian Ordericus, freely 
admits the literary supremacy of Bee, "where almost 
every one seems to be a philosopher and even the un- 
learned have something to teach the frothy gramma- 
rians." 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 177 

In the course of the twelfth century the leadership in 
learning passes from the regular to the secular clergy, 
and the monastic schools decline before the cathedral 
schools of Laon, Tours, Chartres, Orleans, and Paris, 
two of which, Paris and Orleans, soon break the bounds 
of the older curriculum and develop into universities. 
As the current of scholars sets toward these new centres, 
Normandy is left at one side; no longer a leader, its 
students must learn their theology and philosophy at 
Paris, their law at Orleans and Bologna, their medicine 
at Salerno and Montpellier. The principal Norman phi- 
losopher of the new age, William of Conches, the tutor 
of Henry II, is associated with Paris rather than with 
the schools of Normandy. Perhaps the most original 
work of the pioneer of the new science, the Questiones 
naturales of Adelard of Bath, is dedicated to a Norman 
bishop, Richard of Bayeux, but its author was not a 
Norman, nor do we find Norman names among those 
who drank deep at the new founts of Spain and Sicily. 

For a measure of the intellectual activity of the Nor- 
man monasteries and cathedrals nothing could serve 
better than an examination of the contents of their 
libraries, where we might judge for ourselves what books 
they acquired and copied and read. This unfortunately 
we can no longer make. The library of Bee, partly de- 
stroyed by fire in the seventeenth century, was scat- 
tered to the four winds of heaven in the eighteenth, and 
while the legislation of 1791 provided for the transfer of 



178 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

such collections to the public depositories of the neigh- 
boring towns, the libraries of Avranches, Alengon, and 
Rouen, reenforced by the Bibliotheque Nationale, have 
garnered but a small part of the ancient treasures of 
Mont-Saint-Michel, Saint-Evroul, and the establish- 
ments of the lower Seine. Works of importance as well 
as curiosities still survive — autograph corrections of 
Lanfranc, the originals of the great histories of Robert 
of Torlgnl and Ordericus Vitalis, service-books throwing 
light on the origins of the liturgical drama, cartularies of 
churches and abbeys, — but for a more comprehensive 
view of the resources of the twelfth century we must 
turn to the contemporary catalogues which have come 
down to us from the cloisters of Saint-Evroul, Bee, Lire, 
and F6camp, and the cathedral of Rouen. After all, as 
that delightful academician Silvestre Bonnard has re- 
minded us, there Is no reading so easy, so restful, or so 
seductive as a catalogue of manuscripts ; and there is no 
better guide to the silence and the peace of the monastic 
library, as one may still taste them in the quiet of the 
Escorlal or Monte Cassino. Let us take the most specific 
example, the collection of one hundred and forty vol- 
umes bequeathed to Bee by Philip, bishop of Bayeux, at 
his death In 1164, or rather the one hundred and thir- 
teen which reached the monastery, twenty-seven having 
fallen by the way and being hence omitted from the 
catalogue. Like the other libraries of the time, this con- 
sisted chiefly of theology — the writings of the Fathers 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 179 

and of the Carolingian and post-Carolingian commenta- 
tors and theologians, ending with Philip's contempo- 
raries, St. Bernard, Gilbert de la Porr6e, Hildebert of 
Tours, and Hugh of St. Victor, and his metropolitan, 
Hugh of Amiens. Wise in the wisdom of this world, the 
bishop possessed the whole Corpus Juris Civilis in five 
volumes, as well as the leading authorities on canon 
law, Burchard, St. Ives, and the Decretum of Gratian. 
He had none of the Roman poets, although they were 
not unknown to Norman writers of his age, but a fair 
selection of prose works of a literary and philosophi- 
cal character — Cicero and Quintilian, Seneca and the 
Younger Pliny, besides the mediaeval version of Plato's 
TimcBus. There is a goodly sprinkling of the Roman 
historians most in vogue in the Middle Ages, Caesar, 
Suetonius, Valerius Maximus, Florus, Eutropius, and 
the Latin version of Josephus, besides such of their 
mediaeval successors as came nearest to Anglo-Norman 
affairs. Science was confined to Pliny's Natural History 
and two anonymous treatises on mathematics and as- 
tronomy, while the practical arts were represented by 
Palladius on agriculture and Vegetius on tactics. On the 
whole a typically Norman library, deficient on the imag- 
inative side, but strong in orthodox theology, in law, and 
in history; not in all respects an up-to-date collection, 
since it contained none of those logical works of Aristotle 
which were transforming European thought, and, save 
for a treatise of Adelard of Bath, showed no recognizable 



i8o NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

trace of the new science which was beginning to come in 
through Spain; strikingly lacking also, save for a volume 
on Norman history, in products of Normandy itself, 
even in the field of theology and scriptural interpreta- 
tion, where, for example, Richard abbot of Pr6aux had 
written marvellous commentaries upon Genesis, Deu- 
teronomy, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, and the 
Proverbs of Solomon, and had "discoursed allegorically 
or tropologlcally in many treatises upon obscure prob- 
lems of the Prophets." ^ 

After all, works on the history of Normandy were the 
most Norman thing a Norman could produce, and it 
was in this field that the duchy made its chief contribu- 
tion to mediaeval literature and learning. All the usual 
types appear, local annals, lists of bishops and abbots, 
lives of saints, biographies of princes, but the most 
characteristic are the works in which the history of 
Normandy is grasped as a whole: the half-legendary 
account of the early dukes by Dudo of Saint-Quentin, 
the confused but valuable Gesta of William of Jumieges, 
at last restored to us in a critical edition,^ the Chronicle 
of Robert of Torigni, and especially the great Historia 
Ecclesiastica of Ordericus Vitalis, the chef-d'cBuvre of 
Norman historiography and the most important his- 
torical work written in France in the twelfth century. 

Born in 1075 near Shrewsbury, Ordericus was early 

^ Ordericus Vitalis (ed. LePrevost), in, p. 431. 

^ Guillaume de Jumieges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum (ed. Marx), 
Societe de I'Histoire de Normandie, 1914. 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE i8i 

devoted to the monastic life, and lest family affection 
might interfere with his vocation and the sure hope of 
Paradise held out to the sobbing boy, his sorrowing 
parents sent him forever from their sight to spend his 
days at Saint-Evroul near the southern border of Nor- 
mandy. Tonsured at ten, ordained a deacon at eighteen 
and a priest at thirty-two, he bore the burden and heat 
of 6he day under six successive abbots, until as an old 
man of sixty-six he laid down his pen with a touching 
peroration of prayer and thanksgiving to Him who had 
disposed these years according to His good pleasure. 
During this half century of poverty and obedience Or- 
dericus had little opportunity to leave the precincts of 
the monastery, although on rare occasions we can trace 
him in England and at Cambrai, Rheims, and Cluni, 
and the materials of his history had to be gathered al- 
most wholly from the well-stocked library of the abbey 
and from conversation with those who passed his way. 
These facilities were, however, considerable, for, remote 
as Saint-Evroul may seem in its corner of the pays 
d'Ouche, it was in constant relations with England, 
where it possessed lands, and with southern Italy, 
whither it had sent its members to found new convents; 
and like all such establishments it was a place of enter- 
tainment for travellers of all classes, priests and monks, 
knights and jongleurs, even a king like Henry I, who 
brought with them accounts of their journeys about the 
world and tales of great deeds in distant Spain, Sicily, 



i82 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

and Jerusalem. There were few better places to collect 
materials for the writing of history, and there was no 
one who could make better use of them than Ordericus. 
He was fully launched in his great work by 1 123, and he 
kept at it throughout the remaining eighteen years of 
his life, putting it aside in the winter when his fingers 
grew numb with the cold, but resuming it each spring 
in the clear round hand which meets us in many a manu- 
script of Saint-Evroul, and offering it at the end to fu- 
ture generations, a monument more lasting than the 
granite obelisk erected to his memory in 191 2. His 
original purpose was limited to a history of his monas- 
tery, but the plan soon widened to include the principal 
movements of his time and finally grew to the idea of a 
universal history, beginning, indeed, with the Christian 
era instead of with the more usual starting-point of the 
Creation. Nevertheless, even in its final form the work 
of Ordericus is not a general history of the Christian 
centuries, for the general portion is chiefly introductory 
and comparatively brief; his real theme is Norman his- 
tory, centring, of course, round the vicissitudes of his 
convent and the adjacent territory, but also giving a 
large place to the deeds of the Normans in that greater 
Normandy which they had created beyond the sea, in 
England, in Italy, and in Palestine. He is thus not only 
Norman but pan-Norman. The plan, or rather lack of 
plan, of his thirteen books reflects the changes of design 
and the interruptions which the work underwent; there 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 183 

is some repetition, much confusion, and a distinct ab- 
sence of architectonic art. These defects, however, do 
not diminish the prime merit of the work, which Hes in 
its replacement of the jejune annals of the older type by 
a full and ample historical narrative, rich in detail, 
vivid in presentation, giving space to literary history 
and everyday life as well as to the affairs of church and 
state, and constituting as a whole the most faithful and 
living picture which has reached us of the European 
society of his age. Neither in the world nor of the world, 
this monk had a ripe knowledge of men and affairs, in- 
dependence of judgment, a feeling for personality, and 
a sure touch in characterization. He had also a Latin 
style of his own, labored at times rather than affected, 
ready to show its skill in well-turned verse or in well- 
rounded speeches after the fashion of the classical his- 
torians, but direct and vigorous and not unworthy of 
the flexible and sonorous language which he had made 
his own. 

Latin, however, was an exclusive possession of the 
clergy, — and not of all of them, if we can argue from 
the examinations held by Eudes Rigaud, — and by the 
middle of the twelfth century the Norman baronage 
began to demand from the clerks an account of the 
Anglo-Norman past in a language which they too could 
understand. History in the vernacular develops in 
France earlier than elsewhere, and in France earliest in 
Normandy and in the English lands which shared the 



1 84 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

Norman speech and produced the oldest surviving 
example of such a work, the Histoire des Engles of Gai- 
mar, written between 1147 and 11 51. The chief centre 
for the production of vernacular history was the court 
of that patron of ecclesiastical and secular learning, 
Henry II, and his Aqultanian queen, to one or both of 
whom are dedicated the histories of Wace and Benoit 
de Salnte-More. Wace, the most Interesting of this 
group of writers, was a native of Jersey and a clerk of 
Caen who turned an honest penny by his compositions 
and won a canonry at Bayeux by the most Important of 
them, his Roman de Rou. Beginning with Rollo, from 
whom it takes Its name, this follows the course of 
Norman history to the victory of Henry I in 1106, in 
simple and agreeable French verse based upon the 
Latin chroniclers but incorporating something from 
popular tradition. Such a compilation adds little to our 
knowledge, but by the time of the Third Crusade we 
find a contemporary narrative In French verse prepared 
by a jongleur of Evreux who accompanied Richard on 
the expedition. If we ignore the line, at best very faint, 
which in works of this sort separates history from 
romance and from works of edification, we must carry 
the Norman pioneers still further back, to the Vie de 
Saint Alexis which we owe probably to a canon of 
Rouen In the eleventh century, and to the great national 
epic of mediaeval France, the Chanson de Roland, pre- 
Norman in origin but Norman in its early form, which 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 185 

has recently been ascribed to Turold, bishop of Bayeux 
after the death of the more famous Odo and later for 
many years a monk of Bee. There is, one may object, 
nothing monastic in this wonderful paean of mediaeval 
knighthood, whose religion is that of the God of battles 
who has never lied, and whose hero meets death with 
his face toward Spain and his imperishable sword be- 
neath him ; but knights and monks had more in common 
than was once supposed, and we are coming to see that 
the monasteries, especially the monasteries of the great 
highways, had a large share in the making, if not in the 
final writing, of the mediaeval epic as well as the medi- 
aeval chronicles. 

When we reach works like these, the literary history 
of Normandy merges in that of France, as well as in 
that of England, which, thanks to the Norman Con- 
quest and the Norman empire, long remained a literary 
province of France. We must not, however, leave this 
vernacular literature, as yet almost wholly the work of 
clerks, with the impression that its dominant quality is 
romantic or poetical. Its versified form was merely the 
habit of an age which found verse easy to remember; 
the literature itself, as Gaston Paris has well observed,^ 
was "essentially a literature of instruction for the use 
of laymen," fit material for prose and not for poetry. 
It is thus characteristically Norman in subject as well as 
in speech — simple and severe in form, devout and 

1 La litterature normande avant Vannexion, p. 22. 



i86 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

edifying rather than mystical, given to history rather 
than to speculation, and seeking through the moralized 
science of lapidaries and bestiaries and astronomical 
manuals to aid the everyday life of a serious and practi- 
cal people. 

Normandy had also something to say to the world in 
that most mediaeval of arts, architecture, and especially 
in that Romanesque form of building which flourished 
in the eleventh century and the first half of the twelfth. 
The great Norman churches of this epoch were the 
natural outgrowth of its life — the wealth of the ab- 
beys, the splendor of princely prelates like Odo of Bay- 
eux and Geoffrey of Coutances, the piety and penance 
of William the Conqueror and Matilda, expiating by 
two abbeys their marriage within the prohibited de- 
grees, the religious devotion of the people as illustrated 
by the processions of 1145. The biographer of Geoffrey 
de Mowbray, for example, tells * us how the bishop la- 
bored day and night for the enlargement and beautifi- 
cation of his church at Coutances (dedicated in 1056), 
buying the better half of the city from the duke to get 
space for the cathedral and palace, travelling as far as 
Apulia to secure gold and gems and vestments from 
Robert Guiscard and his fellow Normans, and main- 
taining from his rents a force of sculptors, masons, 

^ Gallia Christiana, xi, instr., coll. 219-23; Mortet, Recueil de textes 
relatifs d I'histoire de I' architecture (Paris, 191 1), pp. 71-75. 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 187 

goldsmiths, and workers in glass. Nearly forty years 
later, when the church had been damaged by earth- 
quake and tempest, he brought a plumber from England 
to restore the leaden roof and the fallen stones of the 
towers and to replace the gilded cock which crowned 
the whole ; and when he saw the cock once more glisten- 
ing at the summit, he gave thanks to God and shortly 
passed away, pronouncing eternal maledictions upon 
those who should injure his church. Of this famous 
structure nothing now remains above the ground, for 
the noble towers which look from the hill of Coutances 
toward the western sea are Gothic, like the rest of the 
church; and for surviving monuments of cathedrals of 
the eleventh and twelfth centuries we must go to the 
naves of Bayeux and Evreux and the St. Romain's tower 
of Rouen. Even here the impression will be fragmen- 
tary, broken by Gothic choirs and by towers and spires 
of a still later age, just as the simple lines of the early 
church of Mont-Saint- Michel are swallowed up in the 
ornate Gothic of the loftier parts of the great pile. Edi- 
fices wholly of the Romanesque period must be sought 
in the parish churches in which Normandy is so rich, 
or in the larger abbey-churches which meet us at Les- 
say, Cerisy, Caen, Jumi^ges, and Bocherville. Jumieges, 
though in ruins, preserves the full outline of the style of 
the middle of the eleventh century; Caen presents in 
the Abbaye aux Hommes and the Abbaye aux Dames 
two perfect though contrasted types of a few years 



i88 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

later, the one simple and austere, the other richer and 
less grand. Freeman may seem fanciful when he sug- 
gests that these sister churches express the spirit of 
their respective founders, "the imperial will of the con- 
quering duke" and the milder temper of his "loving 
and faithful duchess," ^ but in any event they are Nor- 
man and typical of their age and country. There are 
elements in the ornamentation of Norman churches in 
this period which have been explained by reference to 
the distant influence of the Scandinavian north or the 
Farther East, there are perhaps traces of Lombard 
architecture in their plan, but their structure as a whole 
is as Norman as the stone of which they are built, dis- 
tinguished by local traits from the other varieties of 
French Romanesque to which this period gave rise. 
Not the least Norman feature of these buildings is the 
persistent common sense of design and execution; the 
Norman architects did not attempt the architecturally 
impossible or undertake tasks, like the cathedral of 
Beauvais, which they were unable to finish in their own 
time and style. "What they began, they completed," 
writes the Nestor of American historians in his sym- 
pathetic interpretation of the art and the spirit of Mont- 
Saint-Michel and Chartres. In Norman art, as in other 
phases of Norman achievement, the last word cannot 
be said till we have followed it far beyond the borders of 
the duchy, northward to Durham, "half house of God, 

* Norman Conquest, iii, p. 109. 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 189 

half castle 'gainst the Scot," and the other massive 
monuments which made * Norman ' synonymous with 
a whole style and period of English architecture, and 
southward to those more ornate structures which 
Norman princes reared at Bari and Cefalu, Palermo 
and Monreale. "No art — either Greek or Byzantine, 
Italian, or Arab — " says Henry Adams,^ "has ever 
created two religious types so beautiful, so serious, so 
impressive, and yet so different, as Mont-Saint-Michel 
watching over its northern ocean, and Monreale, look- 
ing down over its forests of orange and lemon, on Pa- 
lermo and the Sicilian seas." 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

There is no general account of Norman life and culture in any pe- 
riod of the Middle Ages, and no general study of Norman feudalism. 
For conditions in France generally, see Luchaire, La societe franqaise 
au temps de Philippe-Auguste (Paris, 1909), translated by Krehbiel 
(New York, 1912); for England, Miss M. Bateson, Mediceval England 
(New York and London, 1904). On castles, see C. Enlart, Manuel 
d'archeologie franqaise, 11 (Paris, 1904, with bibliography), and 
Mrs. E. S. Armitage, The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles 
(London, 1912). For William the Marshal, see Paul Meyer's intro- 
duction to his edition of the Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal (Paris, 
1891-1901); the poem has been utilized by Jusserand for his account 
of tournaments, Les sports et jeux d'exercice dans I'ancienne France 
(Paris, 1901), ch. 2. 

The work of Delisle, Etudes sur la condition de la classe agricole et 
Vetat de V agriculture en Normandie au moyen age (Evreux, 1851), is a 
classic. 

^ Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, p. 4. 



190 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

The best studies of Norman municipal institutions are A. Ch6ruel, 
Histoire de Rouen pendant Vepoque communale (Rouen, 1843); A. 
Giry, Les Etablissements de Rouen (Paris, 1883-85), supplemented by 
Valin, Recherches sur les origines de la commune de Rouen {Precis of the 
Rouen Academy, 191 1) ; Charles de Beaurepaire, La Vicomte de I'Eau 
de Rouen (Evreux, 1856); E. de Freville, Memoir e sur le commerce 
maritime de Rouen (Rouen, 1857); Miss Bateson, The Laws of Bre- 
teuil, in English Historical Review, xv, xvi ; R. Genestal, La tenure en 
bourgage (Paris, 1900) ; Legras, Le bourgage de Caen (Paris, 191 1). 

The excellent account of the Norman church in H. Bohmer, Kirche 
und Stoat in England und in der Normandie (Leipzig, 1899), stops 
with 1 1 54. On Odo and on Philip d'Harcourt see V. Bourrienne's 
articles in the Revue Catholique de Normandie, vil-x, xviii-xxill. 
The register of Eudes Rigaud (ed. Bonnin, Rouen, 1852) is analyzed 
by Delisle, in Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Charles, viii, pp. 479-99; the 
Miracula Ecclesie Constantiensis and the letter of Abbot Haimo are 
discussed by him, ibid., ix, pp. 339-52; xxi, pp. 113-39. For the 
mortuary rolls, see his facsimile edition of the Rouleau mortuaire dii 
B. Vital (Paris, 1909). The best monograph on a Norman monastery 
is that of R. N. Sauvage, Uabbaye de S. Martin de Troarn (Caen, 
191 1), where other such studies are listed. See also Genestal, Role des 
mcnasteres comme etablissements de credit etudie en Normandie (Paris, 
1901), and Delisle's edition of Robert of Torigni. 

The schools of Bee are described by A. Poree, Histoire de I'abbaye 
du Bee (Evreux, 1901). Notices of the various Norman historians are 
given by A. Molinier, Les sources de Vhistoire de France (Paris, 1901- 
06), especially 11, chs. 25, 33. For Ordericus and St. Evroul see 
Delisle's introduction to the edition of the Historia Ecclesiastica pub- 
lished by the Societe de I'Histoire de France, and the volumes issued 
by the Societe historique et archdologique de I'Orne on the occasion of 
the Fetes of 1912 (Alengon, 1912). Other early catalogues of libra- 
ries, including that of Philip of Bayeux, are in the first two volumes 
of the Catalogue general des MSS. des departements (Paris, 1886-88). 
For the vernacular literature, see Gaston Paris, La litterature normande 
avant I'annexion (Paris, 1899); and L. E. Menger, The Anglo-Norman 
Dialect (New York, 1904). For the latest discussions of the Chanson 
de Roland see J. Bedier, Les legendes epiques, in (Paris, 1912) ; and W. 
Tavernier's studies in the Zeitschrift filr franzosische Sprache und Lit- 



NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 191 

terattir, xxxvi-xlii (1910-14), and the Zeitschrift fiir romanische 
Philologie, xxxviii (1914). Enlart, Manuel d'archeologie frangaise, i, 
mentions the principal works on Norman ecclesiastical architecture. 
See also R. de Lasteyrie, L' architecture religieuse en France a Vepoque 
romane (Paris, 1912), ch. 15; Enlart, Rouen (Paris, 1904); H. Pren- 
tout, Caen et Bayeux (Paris, 1909); Henry Adams, Mont-Saint- Michel 
and Chartres (Boston, 1913). 



VII 

THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 

OF all the achievements of the heroic age of 
Norman history, none were more daring in 
execution or more brilliant in results than the 
exploits of Norman barons in the lands of the Mediter- 
ranean. Battling against the infidel in Spain, in Sicily, 
and in Syria, scattering the papal army and becoming 
the humble vassals of the Holy See, overcoming Lom- 
bard princes and Byzantine generals, the Normans were 
the glorious adventurers of the Mediterranean world 
throughout that eleventh century which constituted 
the great period of Norman expansion. Then, masters 
of southern Italy and Sicily, they put to work their 
powers of assimilation and organization and created a 
strong, well-governed state and a rich, composite civili- 
zation which were the wonder of Europe. If one were 
tempted to ascribe the successes of the Normans in 
England to happy accident or to the unique personality 
of William the Conqueror, the story of Norman achieve- 
ment in the south, the work of scattered bands of simple 
barons without any assistance from the reigning dukes, 
would be conclusive proof of the creative power of the 
Norman genius for conquest and administration. 



THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 193 

The earliest r ilations of the Normans with the coun- 
tries of the Mediterranean were the outgrowth of those 
pilgrimages to holy places which play so important a 
part in mediaeval life and literature. Originating in the 
early veneration for the shrines associated with the be- 
ginnings of Christianity and the sufferings and death of 
the Christian martyrs, pilgrimages were in course of 
time reenforced by the more practical motives of healing 
and penance, until the crowds of pilgrims who haunted 
the roads in the later Middle Ages included many a 
hoary offender who sought to expiate his sins by this 
particular form of good works. Sometimes these peni- 
tents would be sent to wander about the earth for a defi- 
nite time, more frequently they would be assigned a 
journey to a neighboring shrine or to some more famous 
fountain of healing grace, such as Compostela, Rome, 
or Jerusalem. Compostela, hiding among the Galiclan 
hills the bones of no less an apostle than St. James the 
Greater, who became in time the patron saint of Spain 
and spread the name of Santiago over two continents, 
was early a centre of pilgrimage from France, and 
claimed as one of its devotees the mighty Charlemagne, 
the footsteps of whose paladins men traced through the 
dark defiles of the Pyrenees in the Song of Roland, as 
well as in the special itinerary prepared for the use of 
French pilgrims to the tomb of the saint. Rome was of 
course more important, for It claimed two apostles, as 
well as their living successor on the pontifical throne. 



194 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

It needed no pious invention to prove that Charlemagne 
had been in Rome and had received the imperial crown 
as he knelt in St. Peter's, and men told how in their own 
time the great king Canute had betaken himself thither 
with staff and scrip and many horses laden with gold 
and silver. Already the number of strangers in Rome 
was so great that guide-books were compiled indicating 
its principal sights and marvels — "seeing Rome," we 
might call them — ; and as the processions wound into 
sight of the Eternal City, they burst into its praise in 
that wonderful pilgrim's chorus: — 

O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina, 
Cunctarum urbium excellentissima, 
Roseo martyrum sanguine rubea, 
Albis et virginum liliis Candida; 
Salutem dicimus tibi per omnia, 
Te benedicimus: salve per secula. 

Jerusalem was most precious of all, by reason both of 
its sacred associations and of the difficulty of the jour- 
ney. No Charlemagne was needed to justify resort to 
the Holy Sepulchre, where the mother of the great em- 
peror Constantine had built the first shrine; but the 
great Charles had a hostel constructed there for Prank- 
ish pilgrims, and soon legend makes him, too, follow the 
road to Constantinople and Jerusalem, as we are re- 
minded in the great Charlemagne window at Char- 
tres. There were manuals for the pilgrim to Jerusalem 
also, but these were chiefly occupied with how to reach 
the heavenly city, though one of them contents itself 



THE NO':iMANS IN THE SOUTH 195 

with advising thf traveller to keep his face always to 
the east and ask God's help. 

In all this life of the road the Normans took their full 
share. Michelet would have it that their motive was the 
Norman spirit of gain, no longer able to plunder neigh- 
bors at home, but glad of the chance of making some- 
thing on the way and the certainty of gaining a hundred 
per cent by assuring the soul's salvation at the journey's 
end. Certainly they were not afraid to travel nor averse 
to taking advantage of the opportunities which travel 
might bring. We find them, sometimes singly and 
sometimes in armed bands, on the road to Spain, to 
Rome, and to the Holy City. At one time it may be 
the duke himself, Robert the Magnificent, who wends 
his way with a goodly company to the Holy Sepulchre, 
only to die at Nicaea on his return; or a holy abbot, 
like Thierry of Saint-Evroul, denied the sight of the 
earthly Jerusalem which he sought, but turning his 
thoughts to the city not made with hands as he com- 
posed himself for his last sleep before a lonely altar on 
the shores of Cyprus. In other cases we find the mili- 
tary element preponderating, as with Roger of Toeni, 
who led an army against the Saracens of Spain in the 
time of Duke Richard the Good, or Robert Crispin 
half a century later, fighting in Spain, sojourning in 
Italy, and finally passing into the service of the em- 
peror at Constantinople, where he had "much triumph 
and much victory." In this stirring world the line be- 



196 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

tween pilgrim and adventurer was not easy to draw, 
and the Normans did not always draw it. Often "their 
penitent's garb covered a coat of mail," and they carried 
a great sword along with their pilgrim's staff and wal- 
let.^ We must remember that Normandy exported in 
this period a considerable supply of younger sons, bred 
to a life of warfare and fed upon the rich nourishment 
of the chansons de gestes, but turned loose upon the 
world to seek elsewhere the lands and booty and deeds 
of renown which they could no longer expect to find at 
home. The conquest of England gave an outlet to this 
movement in one direction; the conquest of southern 
Italy absorbed it in another. 

In the eleventh century, as in the early nineteenth, 
Italy was merely a geographical expression. The unity 
of law and government which it had enjoyed under the 
Romans had been long since broken by the Lombard 
invasion and the Prankish conquest, which drew the 
centre and north of the peninsula into the currents of 
western politics, while the south continued to look upon 
Constantinople as its capital and Sicily passed under 
the dominion of the Prophet and the Fatimite caliphs 
of Cairo. Separated from the rest of Italy by the 
lofty barrier of the Abruzzi and the wedge of territory 
which the Papacy had driven through the lines of com- 
munication to the west, the southern half followed a 

* Delarc, Les Normands en Italie, p. 35. 



THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 197 

different course of historical development from the days 
of the Lombards to those of Garibaldi. Nature had 
thrust it into the central place in the Mediterranean 
world, to which the gulfs and bays of its long coast-line 
opened the rich hinterland of Campania and Apulia and 
the natural highways beyond. Here had sprung up 
those cities of Magna Graecia which were the cradle of 
Italian civilization; here the Romans had their chief 
harbors at Pozzuoli and Brindisi and their great naval 
base at Cape Miseno; here the ports of Gaeta, Naples, 
Amalfi, and Bari kept intercourse with the East open 
during the Middle Ages. And if the genius of Hamilcar 
and Hannibal had once sought to tear the south and its 
islands from Italy to unite them with a Carthaginian 
empire, their close relations with Africa had again been 
asserted by the raids and conquests of the Saracens, 
while their connection with the East made them the last 
stronghold of Byzantine power beyond the Adriatic. 
In the long run, however, it has been pointed out that, if 
the culture of this region came from the south, its mas- 
ters have come from the north ; ^ and its new masters 
of the eleventh century were to unify and consolidate 
it at the very time when the rest of the peninsula was 
breaking up into warring communes and principalities. 
In the year 1000 the unity of the south was largely 
formal. The Eastern Empire still claimed authority, 
but the northern region was entirely independent under 

^ Bertaux, L'art dans V Italic mSridionale, p. 15. 



198 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

the Lombard princes of Capua, Benevento, and Sa- 
lerno, while the maritime republics of Naples, Gaeta, 
and Amalfi owed at best only a nominal subjection. 
The effective power of Byzantium was limited to the 
extreme south, where its governors and tax-collectors 
ruled in both Apulia and Calabria. Of the two dis- 
tricts Calabria, now the toe of the boot, was the more 
Greek, in religion and language as well as in political 
allegiance, but its scattered cities were unable to defend 
themselves against a vigorous attack. The large Lom- 
bard population of Apulia retained its speech and its 
law and showed no attachment to its Greek rulers, 
whose exactions in taxes and military service brought 
neither peace and security within nor protection from 
the raids of the Saracens. There was abundant material 
for a revolt, and the Normans furnished the occasion. 

The first definite trace of the Normans in Italy ap- 
pears in or about the year 1016, when a band returning 
from Jerusalem is found at Monte Gargano on the east- 
ern coast. There was here an ancient shrine of St. 
Michael, older even than the famous monastery of St. 
Michael of the Peril on the confines of Normandy with 
which it had shared the red cloak of its patron, and a 
natural object of veneration on the part of Norman 
pilgrims, who well understood the militant virtues of 
the archangel of the flaming sword. Here the Normans 
fell into conversation with a Lombard named Meles, 
who had recently led an unsuccessful revolt in Apulia 



THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 199 

and who told them that with a few soldiers like them- 
selves he could easily overcome the Greeks, whereupon 
they promised to return with their countrymen and as- 
sist him. Another story of the same year tells of a body 
of forty valiant Normans, also on their way home from 
the Holy Sepulchre, who found a Saracen army besieg- 
ing Salerno and, securing arms and horses from the na- 
tives, defeated and drove off the infidel host. Besought 
by the inhabitants to stay, they replied that they had 
acted only for the love of God, but consented to carry 
home lemons, almonds, rich vestments, and other prod- 
ucts of the south as a means of attracting other Nor- 
mans to make their homes in this land of milk and 
honey. Legend doubtless has its part in these tales, — 
the good Orderic makes the twenty thousand Saracens 
in front of Salerno flee before a hundred Normans ! — 
but the general account of the occasion of the Norman 
expeditions seems correct. Possibly a Lombard emis- 
sary accompanied the pilgrims home to help in the re- 
cruiting; certainly in 1017 the Normans are back in 
force and ready for business. There was, however, 
nothing sensational or decisive in the early exploits of 
the Normans on Italian soil. The results of the first 
campaigns with Meles in northern Apulia were lost in a 
serious defeat at Canne, and for many years the Nor- 
mans, few in number but brave and skilful, sought 
their individual advantage in the service of the various 
parties in the game of Italian politics, passing from one 



200 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

prince to another as advantage seemed to ofifer, and 
careful not to give to any so decisive a preponderance 
that he might dispense with them. The first Norman 
principaHty was estabHshed about 1030 at A versa, just 
north of Naples, where the money of Rouen continued 
to circulate more than a century afterward; but such 
definite points of crystallization make their appearance 
but slowly, and the body of the Normans, constantly 
recruited from home, lived as mercenaries on pay and 
pillage. Their reputation was, however, established, 
and when the prince of Salerno was asked by the Pope 
to disband his Norman troop, he replied that it had cost 
him much time and money to collect this precious 
treasure, for whom the soldiers of the enemy were "as 
meat before the devouring lions." ^ 

Among the Norman leaders the house of Hauteville 
stands out preeminently, both as the dominant force in 
this formative period and as the ancestor of the later 
princes of southern Italy and Sicily. The head of the 
family, Tancred, held the barony of Hauteville, in the 
neighborhood of Coutances, but his patrimony was 
quite insufficient to provide for his twelve sons, most of 
whom went to seek their fortune in the south, an elder 
group consisting of William of the Iron Arm, Drogo, 
and Humphrey, and a younger set of half-brothers, of 
whom the most important are Robert Guiscard and 
Roger. At the outset scarcely distinguishable from 

1 Aim6, Ystoire de It Normant, p. 124. 



THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 201 

their fellow-warriors, li fortissime Normant of their his- 
torian Aim6, the exploits of these brothers are cele- 
brated by the later chroniclers in a way which reminds 
us less of sober history than of the heroes of the sagas or 
the chansons de gestes. William of the Iron Arm and 
Drogo seem to have arrived in the south about 1036 
and soon signalized themselves in the first invasion of 
Sicily and in the conquest of northern Apulia, where 
William was chosen leader, or count, by the other Nor- 
mans and at his death in 1046 succeeded by Drogo, who 
was soon afterward invested with the county by the 
Emperor Henry III. It was apparently in this year 
that Robert Guiscard first came to Italy. Refused as- 
sistance by his brothers, he hired himself out to various 
barons until he was left by Drogo in charge of a small 
garrison in the mountains of Calabria. Here he lived 
like a brigand, carrying off the cattle and sheep of the 
inhabitants and holding the people themselves for ran- 
som. On one occasion he laid an ambush for the Greek 
commandant of Bisignano whom he had invited to a 
conference, and compelled him to pay twenty thousand 
golden solidi for his freedom. Brigand as he was, Rob- 
ert was more than a mere bandit. His shrewdness and 
resourcefulness early gained him the name of Guis- 
card, or the wary, and his Byzantine contemporary, the 
princess Anna Comnena, has left a portrait of him in 
which his towering stature, flashing eye, and bellowing 
strength are matched by his overleaping ambition and 



202 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

desire to dominate, his skill in organization, and his 
unconquerable will. Allied by marriage to a powerful 
baron of the south, he soon began to make headway in 
the conquest of Calabria, and while Drogo and his 
brother Humphrey were jealous of Robert's advance- 
ment, at Humphrey's death in 1057 he was chosen to 
succeed as count and leader of the Normans. Leaving to 
the youngest brother Roger, just arrived from Haute- 
ville, the conquest of Calabria and the first attempts on 
Sicily, Guiscard gave his attention particularly to the 
affairs of Apulia, and after a series of campaigns and 
revolts completed the subjugation of the mainland by 
the capture of Bari in 1071. Five years after the battle 
of Hastings the whole of southern Italy had passed un- 
der Norman rule. The south had been conquered, but 
for whom? Robert was no king, and a mere count must 
have, for form's sake at least, a feudal superior. And 
this part, strangely enough, was taken by the Pope. 

The relations of the Normans with the Papacy form 
not the least remarkable chapter in the extraordinary 
history of their dominion in the south. This period of 
expansion coincided with the great movement of re- 
vival and reform in the church which was taken up with 
vigor by the German Popes of the middle of the century 
and culminated some years later in the great pontificate 
of Gregory VII. So far as the Italian policy of the Pa- 
pacy was concerned, the movement seems to have had 
two aspects, an effort to put an end to the disorders 



THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 203 

produced by simony and by the marriage of the clergy, 
evils aggravated in the south by the conflicting author- 
ity of the Greek and Latin bishops, and a desire to ex- 
tend the temporal power and influence of the Pope in 
the peninsula. In both of these directions the conquests 
of the Normans seemed to threaten the papal interests, 
and we are not surprised to find the first of this vigorous 
series of Popes, Leo IX, interfering actively in the ec- 
clesiastical affairs of the region and acting as the de- 
fender of the native population, which appealed to him 
and, in the case of Benevento, formally placed itself 
under his protection. Finally, with a body of troops 
collected in Germany and in other parts of Italy, he met 
the Normans in battle at Civitate, in 1053, and suffered 
an overwhelming defeat which clearly established the 
Norman supremacy in Italy. The Normans could not, 
however, follow up their victory as if it had been won 
over an ordinary enemy ; indeed they seem to have felt 
a certain embarrassment in the situation, and after 
humbling themselves before the Pope, they treated him 
with respect and deference which did not prevent their 
keeping him for some months in honorable detention at 
Benevento. Plainly the Normans were not to be sub- 
dued by force of arms, and it soon became evident to 
the reforming party that they would be useful allies 
against the Roman nobles and the unreformed clergy, 
as well as against the dangerous authority of the Ger- 
man emperor. Accordingly in 1059, the year in which 



204 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

the college of cardinals received its first definite constitu- 
tion as the electors of the Pope, Nicholas II held a coun- 
cil at the Norman hill-fortress of Melfi, attended by the 
higher clergy of the south and also by the two chief 
Norman princes, Richard of Aversa and Robert Guis- 
card. In return for the Pope's investiture of their lands, 
these princes took an oath of allegiance and fealty to 
the Holy See and agreed to pay an annual rent to the 
Pope for their domains; in Robert's oath, which has 
been preserved, he styles himself "by the grace of God 
and St. Peter duke of Apulia and Calabria and, with 
their help, hereafter of Sicily." As duke and vassal of 
the Pope, the cattle-thief of the Calabrian mountains 
had henceforth a recognized position in feudal society. 

Guiscard, however, was not the man to rest content 
with the position he had won, or to interpret his obliga- 
tion of vassalage as an obligation of obedience. He was 
soon in the field again, pushing up the west coast to 
Amalfi and up the east into the Abruzzi, taking no great 
pains as he went to distinguish the lands of St, Peter 
from the lands of others. The Pope began to ask himself 
what he had secured by the alliance, and a definite 
break was soon followed by the excommunication of the 
Norman leader. By this time the papal see was occu- 
pied by Gregory VII, who as Hildebrand had long been 
the power behind the throne under his predecessors, the 
greatest, the most intense, and the most uncompromis- 
ing of the Popes of the eleventh century; yet even he 



THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 205 

failed to bend the Norman to his will. Fearing a com- 
bination with his bitterest enemy, the Emperor Henry 
IV, he finally made peace with Guiscard, and in the re- 
newal of fealty and investiture which followed, the 
recent conquests of the Normans were expressly ex- 
cepted. No great time elapsed before the Pope was 
forced to make a desperate appeal for Norman aid. 
After repeated attempts Henry IV got control of Rome, 
shut up Gregory in the Castle of Sant' Angelo, and in- 
stalled another Pope in his place, who crowned Henry 
emperor in St. Peter's. Then, in May, 1084, Guiscard's 
army came. The emperor made what might be called ' a 
strategic retreat' to the north, the siege of Sant' Angelo 
was raised, and Rome was given over to butchery and 
pillage by the Normans and their Saracen troops. Fire 
followed the sword, till the greater part of the city had 
been burned. Ancient remains and Christian churches 
such as San Clemente were ruined by the flames, and 
quarters like the Caellan Hill have never recovered 
from the destruction. The monuments of ancient Rome 
suffered more from the Normans than from the Van- 
dals. Unable to maintain himself in Rome without a 
protector, Gregory accompanied his Norman allies 
southward as far as Salerno, now a Norman city, where 
he died the following year, protesting to the last that he 
died in exile because he had "loved justice and hated 
iniquity." The year 1085 also saw the end of Robert 
Guiscard. Sought as an ally alike by the emperors of 



2o6 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

the East and of the West, he had begun three years 
earlier a series of campaigns against the Greek empire, 
seizing the ports of Avlona and Durazzo which were 
then as now the keys to the Adriatic, and battHng with 
the Venetians by sea and the Greeks by land until his 
troops penetrated as far as Thessaly. He finally suc- 
cumbed to illness on the island of Cephalonia at the age 
of seventy, and was buried in his Apulian monastery of 
Venosa, where Norman monks sang the chants of 
Saint-Evroul over a tomb which commemorated him as 
"the terror of the world": — 

Hie terror mundi Guiscardus; hie expulit Urbe 
Quern Ligures regem, Roma, Lemannus habent. 
Parthus, Arabs, Maeedumque phalanx non texit Alexin. 
At fuga; sed Venetum nee fuga nee pelagus.^ 

With the passing of Robert Guiscard the half-century 
of Norman conquest is practically at an end, to be fol- 
lowed by another half-century of rivalry and consolida- 
tion, until Roger II united all the Norman conquests 
under a single ruler and took the title of king in 1130, 
just a hundred years after the foundation of the first 
Norman principality at A versa. Guiscard 's lands and 
title of duke passed to his son Roger, generally called 
Roger Borsa to distinguish him from his uncle and 
cousin of the same name. The Norman possessions in 
Calabria and the recent acquisitions in Sicily remained 
in the hands of Guiscard's brother Count Roger, nomi- 
* William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 322. 



THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 207 

nally a vassal of the duke of Apulia, while the northern 
principality of Capua kept its independence, to be sub- 
sequently exchanged for feudal vassalage. Roger of 
Apulia, however, was a weak ruler, in spite of the good 
will of the church and his uncle's support, and the re- 
volt of his brother Bohemond and the Apullan barons 
threatened the land with feudal disintegration. Want 
of governance was likewise writ large over the reign of 
his son William, who succeeded as duke in 1 1 1 1 and ruled 
till 1 127. Guiscard's real successor as a political and 
military leader was his brother Roger, conqueror and 
organizer of Sicily and founder of a state which his 
more famous son turned into a kingdom. 

Once master of Calabria, Count Roger had begun to 
cast longing eyes beyond the Straits of Messina at the 
rich island which has in all ages proved a temptation to 
the rulers of the south. No member of the house of 
Hautevllle, their panegyrist tells us, ever saw a neigh- 
bor's lands without wanting them for himself, and in 
this case there was profit for the soul as well as for the 
body if the count could "win back to the worship of the 
true God a land given over to infidelity, and administer 
temporally for the divine service the fruits and rents 
usurped by a race unmindful of God." ^ The language 
is that of Geoffrey Malaterra; the excuse meets us 
throughout the world's history — six centuries earlier 
when Clovis bore it ill that the Arian Visigoths should 
* Geoffrey Malaterra, ii, p. i. 



2o8 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

possess a fair portion of Gaul which might become his, 
six centuries later when Emmanuel Downing thought 
it sin to tolerate the devil-worship of the Narragansetts 
"if upon a Just warre the Lord should deliver them" 
to be exchanged for the "gaynefull pilladge" of negro 
slaves ; ^ nor is the doctrine without advocates in our 
own day. We may think of the conquest of Sicily as a 
sort of crusade before the Crusades, decreed by no 
church council and spread abroad by no preaching or 
privileges, but conceived and executed by Norman en- 
terprise and daring. Like the greater crusades in the 
East, it profited by the disunion of the Moslem; like 
them, too, it did not scruple to make alliances with the 
infidel and to leave him in peaceful cultivation of his 
lands when all was over. 

The conquest of Sicily began with the capture of 
Messina in 1061 and occupied thirty years. It was 
chiefly the work of Roger, though Guiscard aided him 
throughout the earlier years and claimed a share in the 
results for himself, as well as vassalage for Roger's por- 
tion. The decisive turning-point was a joint enterprise, 
the siege and capture of Palermo in 1072, which gave 
the Normans control of the Saracen capital, the largest 
city in Sicily, with an all-anchoring harbor from which 
it took its name. The Saracens, however, still held the 
chief places of the island: the ancient Carthaginian 
strongholds of the west and centre, Eryx and 'inex- 

* Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, fourth series, vi, p. 65. 



THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 209 

pugnable Enna,' known since mediaeval times as Cas- 
trogiovanni ; Girgenti, "most beautiful city of mortals," 
with its ancient temples and olive groves rising from the 
shores of the African Sea; Taormina, looking up at the 
snows and fires of Etna and forth over Ionian waters to 
the bold headlands of Calabria; and Syracuse, sheltering 
a Saracen fleet in that great harbor which had wit- 
nessed the downfall of Athenian greatness. To subdue 
all these and what lay between required nineteen years 
of hard fighting, varied, of course, by frequent visits to 
Roger's possessions on the mainland and frequent ex- 
peditions in aid of his nephew, but requiring, even when 
the great count was present in person, military and 
diplomatic skill of a high order. When, however, the 
work was done and the last Saracen stronghold, Noto, 
surrendered in 1 091, Count Roger had under his do- 
minion a strong and consolidated principality, where 
Greeks and Mohammedans enjoyed tolerance for their 
speech and their faith, where a Norman fortress had 
been constructed in every important town, and where 
the barons, holding in general small and scattered fiefs, 
owed loyal obedience to the count who had made their 
fortunes, a sharp contrast to the turbulent feudalism of 
Apulia, which looked upon the house of Hauteville as 
leaders but not as masters. Roger was also in a position 
to treat with a free hand the problems of the church, 
reorganizing at his pleasure the dioceses which had dis- 
appeared under Mohammedan rule, and receiving from 



210 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

Pope Urban II in 1098 for himself and his heirs the dig- 
nity of apostoHc legate in Sicily, so that other legates 
were excluded and the Pope could treat with the Sicilian 
church only through the count. This extraordinary 
privilege, the foundation of the so-called 'Sicilian mon- 
archy' in ecclesiastical matters, was the occasion of 
ever-recurring disputes in later times, but the success 
of Roger's crusade against the infidel seemed at the 
moment to justify so unusual a concession. 

At his death in i loi Roger I left behind him two sons, 
Simon and Roger, under the regency of their mother 
Adelaide. Four years later Simon died, leaving as the 
undisputed heir of the Sicilian and Calabrian domin- 
ions the ten-year-old Roger II, who at the age of sixteen 
took personal control of the government. During the 
regency the capital had crossed the Straits of Messina 
from the old Norman headquarters in the Calabrian 
hills at Mileto, where Roger I lay buried; henceforth it 
was fixed at Palermo, fit centre for a Mediterranean 
state. When his cousin William died, Roger II was 
quick to seize the Apulian inheritance, which he had to 
vindicate in the field not only against the revolted 
barons but against the Pope, anxious to prevent at all 
cost the consolidation of the Norman possessions in the 
hands of a single ruler. Securing his investiture with 
Apulia from Pope Honorius II in 1128, Roger two years 
later took advantage of the disputed election to the 
Papacy to obtain from Anacletus II the dignity of king; 



THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 211 

and on Christmas Day, 1 130, he was crowned and 
anointed at Palermo, taking henceforth the title "by 
the grace of God king of Sicily, Apulia, and Calabria, 
help and shield of the Christians, heir and son of the 
great Count Roger." What this kingdom was to mean 
in the history and culture of Europe we shall consider 
in the next lecture. 

Meanwhile, in order to complete our survey of the 
deeds of the Normans in the south, we must take some 
notice of the part they played in the Crusades and in 
the Latin East. A movement which comprised the 
whole of western Europe, and even made Jerusalem- 
farers out of their kinsmen of the Scandinavian north, 
could not help affecting a people such as the Normans, 
who had already served a long apprenticeship as pil^ 
grims to distant shrines and as soldiers of the cross in 
Spain and Sicily. Three Norman prelates were present 
at Clermont in 1095 when Pope Urban fired the Latin 
world with the cry Dieu le veut, and they carried back 
to Normandy the council's decrees and the news of the 
holy war. The crusade does not, however, seem to have 
had any special preachers in Normandy, where we hear 
of no such scenes as accompanied the fiery progress of 
Peter the Hermit through Lorraine and the Rhineland, 
and of none of the popular movements which sent men 
to their death under Peter's leadership in the Danube 
valley and beyond the Bosporus. Pioneers and men-at- 



212 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

arms rather than enthusiasts and martyrs, the Normans 
kept their heads when Europe was seething with the 
new adventure, and the combined band of Normans, 
Bretons, and EngHsh which set forth in September, 
1096, does not appear to have been very large. At its 
head, however, rode the duke of Normandy, Robert 
Curthose, called by his contemporaries 'the soft duke,' 
knightly, kind-hearted, and easy-going, incapable of 
refusing a favor to any one, under whom the good peace 
of the Conqueror's time had given way to general dis- 
order and confusion. Impecunious as always, he had 
been obliged to pawn the duchy to his brother William 
Rufus in order to raise the funds for the expedition. 
With him went his fighting uncle, Odo of Bayeux, and 
the duke's chaplain Arnulf, more famous in due time as 
patriarch of Jerusalem. It does not appear that Robert 
was an element of special strength in the crusading 
host, although he fought by the side of the other leaders 
at Nicaea and Antioch and at the taking of Jerusalem. 
He spent the winter pleasantly in the south of Italy on 
his way to the East, so that he reached Constantinople 
after most of the others had gone ahead, and he slipped 
away from the hardships of the siege of Antioch to take 
his ease amidst the pleasant fare and Cyprian wines of 
Laodicea ^ — Robert was always something of a Laodi- 
cean ! When his vows as a crusader had been fulfilled at 
the Holy Sepulchre, he withdrew from the stern work of 

* Laodicea ad mare, not the Phrygian Laodicea of the Apocalypse. 



THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 213 

the new kingdom of Jerusalem and started home, bring- 
ing back a Norman bride of the south for the blessing of 
St. Michael of the Peril, and hanging up his standard in 
his mother's abbey-church at Caen. Legend, however, 
was kind to Robert: before long he had killed a giant 
Saracen in single combat and refused the crown of the 
Latin kingdom because he felt himself unworthy, until 
he became the hero of a whole long-forgotten cycle of 
romance. 

The real Norman heroes of the First Crusade must be 
sought elsewhere, again among the descendants of Tan- 
cred of Hauteville. When Robert Curthose and his 
companions reached the south on their outward jour- 
ney, they found the Norman armies engaged in the 
siege of Amalfi under the great Count Roger and Guis- 
card's eldest son Bohemond, a fair-haired, deep-chested 
son of the north, "so tall in stature that he stood above 
the tallest men by nearly a cubit." The fresh enter- 
prise caught the imagination of Bohemond, who had 
lost the greater part of his father's heritage to his 
brother Roger Borsa and saw the possibility of a new 
realm in the East; and, cutting a great cloak into 
crosses for himself and his followers, he withdrew from 
the siege and began preparations for the expedition to 
Palestine. Among those who bound themselves to the 
great undertaking were five grandsons and two great- 
grandsons of Tancred of Hauteville, chief among them 
Bohemond's nephew Tancred, whose loyalty and prow- 



214 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

ess were to be proved on many a desperate battle-field 
of Syria. Commanding what was perhaps the strongest 
contingent in the crusading army and profiting by the 
experience of his campaigns in the Balkans in his fa- 
ther's reign, Bohemond proved the most vigorous and 
resourceful leader of the First Crusade. His object, 
however, had little connection with the relief of the 
Eastern Empire or the liberation of the Holy City, but 
was directed toward the formation of a great Syrian 
principality for himself, such as the other members of 
his family had created in Italy and Sicily. As the centre 
for such a dominion Antioch was far better suited than 
Jerusalem both commercially and strategically, and 
Bohemond took good care to secure the control of this 
city for himself before obtaining the entrance of the 
crusading forces. He showed the Norman talent of con- 
ciliating the native elements — Greek, Syrian, and Ar- 
menian — in his new state, and for a time seemed in 
a fair way to build up a real Norman kingdom in the 
East. In the end, however, the Eastern Empire and 
the Turks proved too strong for him; he lost precious 
months in captivity among the Mussulmans, and when 
he had raised another great army in France and Italy 
some years later, he committed the folly of a land ex- 
pedition against Constantinople which ended in disas- 
ter. Bohemond did not return to the East, and his 
bones are still shown to visitors beneath an Oriental 
mausoleum at Canosa, where Latin verses lament his 



THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 215 

loss to the cause of the Holy Land. Tancred struggled 
gallantly to maintain the position in Syria during his 
uncle's absence, but he fought a losing fight, and the 
principality of Antioch dwindled into an outlying de- 
pendency of the kingdom of Jerusalem, in which rela- 
tion it maintained its existence until the line became 
extinct with Bohemond VH in 1287. 

Two other Norman princes appear as leaders in the 
course of the later Crusades, Richard the Lion-Hearted, 
whose participation in the Third Crusade we have al- 
ready had occasion to notice, and Frederick H, who 
succeeded to the power and the policy of his Norman 
ancestors of the south. For each of these rulers, how- 
ever, the crusade was merely an episode in the midst of 
other undertakings; the day of permanent Frankish 
states in Syria had gone by, and neither made any 
attempt at founding a Syrian kingdom. The Fourth 
Crusade was in no sense a Norman movement, so that 
the Normans did not contribute to the new France 
which the partition of the Eastern empire created on 
the Greek mainland, where Frankish castles rose to 
perpetuate the memory of Burgundian dukes of Athens 
and Lombard wardens of the pass of Thermopylae. In 
the Frankish states of Syria we find a certain number of 
Norman names but no considerable Norman element 
in the Latin population. The fact is that the share of 
the Normans in the First Crusade was out of all pro- 
portion to their contribution to the permanent occupa- 



2i6 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

tion of the East. The principality of Antioch was the 
only Norman state in the eastern Mediterranean, and 
its distinctively Norman character largely disappeared 
with the passing of Bohemond I and Tancred. Unlike 
their fellow-Christians of France and Italy, the Nor- 
mans were not drawn by the commercial and colonizing 
side of the crusading movement. The Norman lands in 
England and Italy offered a sufficient field for colonial 
enterprise, and the results were more substantial and 
more lasting than the romantic but ephemeral creations 
of Prankish power in the East, while the position of the 
Syrian principalities as intermediaries in Mediterranean 
civilization was matched by the free intermixture of 
eastern and western culture in the kingdom of Sicily. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The annals of the Norman conquest of southern Italy and Sicily 
are best given by F. Chalandon, Histoire de la domination normande 
en Italic et en Sicile (Paris, 1907), i. O. Delarc, Les Normands en Italic 
(Paris, 1883), is fuller on the period before 1073, but less critical. The 
Byzantine side of the story is given by J. Gay, U Italic meridionalc et 
V empire byzantin (Paris, 1904); the Saracen, by Michele Amari, 
Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia (Florence, 1854-72), lii. There is 
nothing in English fuller than the introductory chapters of E. Curtis, 
Roger of Sicily (New York, 1912). Interesting historical sketches of 
particular localities will be found iii F. Lenormant, La Grande-Grhce 
(Paris, 1881-84); 3-rid F- Gregorovius, Apulische Landschaften (Leip- 
zig, 1877). On the sanctuary of St. Michael on Monte Gargano, see 
E. Gothein, Die CuUurentwickelung Siid-Italiens (Breslau, 1886), pp. 
41-111. 

No study has been made of the Normans in Spain ; for the pilgrim- 



THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 217 

ages to Compostela, see B^dier, Les legendes epiques, in. For the 
Normans in the Byzantine empire see G. Schlumberger, "Deux chefs 
normands des armies byzan tines," in Revue historique, xvi, pp. 289- 
303 (1881). 

There is nothing on the share of the Normans in the Crusades 
analogous to P. Riant, Les Scandinaves en Terre Sainte (Paris, 1865). 
The details can be picked out of R. Rohricht, Geschichte des Konig- 
reichs Jerusalem (Innsbruck, 1898), and Geschichte des ersten Kreuz- 
zuges (Innsbruck, 1901). There is no satisfactory biography of Rob- 
ert Curthose; the legends concerning him are discussed by Gaston 
Paris in Comptes-rendus de VAcademie des inscriptions, 1890, pp. 
207 ff. For the Norman princes of Antioch, see B. Kugler, Boemund 
und Tankred (Tubingen, 1862); and G. Rey's articles in the Revue 
de V Orient latin, iv, pp. 321-407, viii, pp. 116-57 (1896, 1900). 



VIII 

THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 

OF the widely separated lands which made up 
the greater Normandy of the Middle Ages, 
none have drifted farther apart than Norman 
England and Norman Sicily. Founded about the same 
time and not greatly different in area, these states have 
lost all common traditions, until the history of the 
southern Normans seems remote, in time as in space, 
from their kinsmen of the north. With the widening 
of the historical field, southern Italy and Sicily no 
longer occupy, as in Mediterranean days, the centre of 
the historic stage, and the splendor of their early his- 
tory has been dimmed by earthquake and fever, by 
economic distress, and by the debasing traditions of 
centuries of misrule. Neither in language nor race nor 
political traditions does England recognize relationship 
between the country of the Black Hand and the ' mother 
of parliaments.' Yet if the English world has lost the 
feeling of kinship for the people of the south, it has not 
lost feeling for the land. It was no mere reminiscence 
of * Vergilian headlands ' and the thunders of the Odys- 
sey that drew Shelley to the Bay of Naples, Browning 
to Sorrento, or, to take a parallel example elsewhere. 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 219 

Goethe to the glowing orange-groves of Palermo. And 

it is not alone the poet whose soul responds to 

A castle, precipice-encurled, 
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine; 

or 

A sea-side house to the farther South, 
Where the baked cicala dies of drouth, 
And one sharp tree — 't is a cypress — stands. 

No land of the western Mediterranean has burnt itself 
so deeply into the imagination and sentiment of the 
English-speaking peoples. Twice has this vivid land of 
the south played a leading part in the world's life and 
thought, once under the Greeks, of "wind-swift thought 
and city-founding mind," as we may read in the mar- 
bles of Paestum and Selinus and in the deathless pages 
of Thucydides; and a second time under the Norman 
princes and their Hohenstaufen successors, creators of 
an extraordinarily vigorous and precocious state and a 
brilliant cosmopolitan culture. If our interest in this 
brief period of Sicilian greatness be not Norman, it is 
at least human, as in one of the culminating points 
of Mediterranean civilization. 

It must be emphasized at the outset that the history 
of this Norman kingdom was brief. It had two rulers 
of genius, Roger II, 1130-54, and his grandson Fred- 
erick II, 1 1 98-1 250, separated by the reigns of William 
the Bad and William the Good, — contemporaries of 
Henry II of England, and neither so bad nor so good 



220 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

as their names might lead us to suppose, — Tancred of 
Lecce and his son William III, and Constance, Roger's 
daughter and Frederick's mother, wife of the Hohen- 
staufen Emperor Henry VI. It is usual to consider the 
Norman period as closing with the deposition of William 
III in 1 1 94 and to class Constance and Frederick II 
with the Hohenstaufen. In the case of Constance there 
seems to be no possible reason for this, for she was as 
Norman as any of her predecessors and issued docu- 
ments in her own name throughout the remaining three 
years of her husband's life and during the few months 
of 1197-98 by which she survived him. With their son 
Frederick II, half Norman and half Hohenstaufen, the 
question is perhaps even, and the science of genetics 
has not yet advanced far enough to enable us to classify 
and trace to their source the dominant and the recessive 
elements in his inheritance. No one, however, can 
study him at close range without discovering marked 
affinities with his Norman predecessors, notably the 
second Roger, and the whole trend of recent investiga- 
tion goes to show that, in the field of government as in 
that of culture, his policy is a continuation of the work 
of the Norman kings, from whom much of his legisla- 
tion is directly derived. Half Norman by birth, Fred- 
erick was preponderantly Norman in his political herit- 
age. It was in Sicily that he grew up and began to rule, 
and in Sicily that he did his really constructive work. 
To judge him as a Hohenstaufen is only less misleading 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 221 

than to judge him as a German king, for the centre and 
aim of his policy lay in the Mediterranean. In Fred- 
erick's sons, legitimate and illegitimate, the Norman 
strain is still further attenuated, and as they had no 
real opportunity to continue their father's work, it 
matters little whether we call them Normans or Ho- 
henstaufen. The coming of Charles of Anjou ends this 
epoch, and his victory at Tagliacozzo in 1268 seals the 
fate of the dynasty. We may, if we choose, carry the 
Norman period to this point; for all real purposes it 
ends with the death of Frederick in 1250. The preced- 
ing one hundred and twenty years embrace the real 
life-history of the Norman kingdom. Brief as this is, it 
is too long for a single lecture, and we must limit our- 
selves to Roger and the two Williams, touching on the 
developments of the thirteenth century only in the 
most incidental fashion. 

Throughout this period the territorial extent of the 
realm remained practically unchanged, comprising Sic- 
ily, with Malta, and the southern half of the Italian 
peninsula as far as Terraclna on the western coast and 
the river Tronto on the eastern. There were of course 
times when the royal authority was disputed within and 
attacked from without, — feudal revolts, raids by the 
Pisans, expeditions of the German emperor, diplomatic 
contests with the Pope, — but it was not permanently 
limited or shorn of its territories. There were, on the 
other hand, moments of expansion, particularly by sea, 



222 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

for Sicily was of necessity a naval power and early saw 
the importance of creating a navy commensurate with 
its maritime position. The occupation of Tripoli and 
Tunis by Roger II seized the Mediterranean by the 
throat ; the possession of Corfu threatened the freedom 
of the Adriatic; but neither conquest was permanent, 
and in the main the Greek empire and the powers of 
northern Africa succeeded in keeping the Sicilian kings 
within their natural boundaries. 

In area about four- fifths the size of England, the 
southern kingdom showed far greater diversity, both in 
the land and in its inhabitants. Stretching from the 
sub-tropical gardens of Sicily into the heart of the high- 
est Apennines, it was divided by mountain and sea into 
distinct natural regions between which communication 
continues difficult even to-day — the isolated valleys 
of the Abruzzi, the great plain of Apulia, the 'granite 
citadel' of Calabria, the rich fields of Campania, the 
commercial cities of the Bay of Naples and Gulf of Sa- 
lerno, the contrasted mountains and shore-lands of Sic- 
ily itself. The difficulties of geography were increased 
by differences of race, religion, and political traditions. 
The mass of the continental population was, of course, 
of Italian origin, going back in part to the Samnite 
shepherds of primitive Italy, and while it had been 
modified in many places by the Lombard conquest, it 
retained its Latin speech and was subject to the au- 
thority of the Latin church. Calabria, however, was 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 223 

now Greek, in religion as in language, and the Greek 
element was considerable in the cities of Apulia and 
flowed over into Sicily, where the chief foreign constit- 
uent was African and Mohammedan. Politically, there 
was a mixed inheritance of Lombard and Roman law, 
of Greek and Saracen bureaucracy, of municipal inde- 
pendence, and of Norman feudalism, entrenched in the 
mountain-fortresses of upper Apulia and the Abruzzi; 
while the diverse origins of the composite state were ex- 
pressed in the sovereign's official title, "king of Sicily,--, 
of the duchy of Apulia, and of the principality of 
Capua." The union of these conflicting elements into 
a single strong state was the test and the triumph of 
Norman statesmanship. 

Plainly the terms of this political problem were quite 
different from that set the Norman rulers of England. 
Whatever local divergences careful study of Anglo- 
Saxon England may still reveal, there were no differ- 
ences of religion or of general political tradition, while 
the rapidity of the conquest at the hands of a single 
ruler made possible a uniform policy throughout the 
whole country. The convenient formula of forfeiture 
and regrant of all the land, for example, created at once 
uniformity of tenure and of social organization. More- 
over, as we have already seen, back of the Norman con- 
quest of England lay Normandy itself, firmly organized 
under a strong duke, who took with him across the 



224 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

Channel his household officers and his lay and spiritual 
counsellors to form the nucleus of his new central gov- 
ernment, which was in many respects one with the cen- 
tral government of Normandy. In the south none of 
these favoring conditions prevailed. A country com- 
posed of many diverse elements was conquered by 
different leaders and at different times, so that there 
could be no question of uniformity of system. Indeed 
there could be no system at all, for the Normans came 
as individual adventurers, with no governmental or- 
ganization behind them, and the instruments of govern- 
ment which they used had to be created as they went 
along. Whatever of Norman tradition reached the south 
could come only in the subdivided and attenuated form 
of individual influences. Furthermore, the Norman in- 
gredient in the population continued relatively small. 
The scattered bands of early days were of course reen- 
forced as time went on, but there was never any general 
migration or any movement that affected the mass of 
the population in town and country. If we had any 
statistics, we should doubtless find that some hundreds 
or at most a few thousands would cover the entire Nor- 
man population of Italy and Sicily. These brought with 
them their speech, their feudal tenures, probably some 
elements of Norman customary law; but, given their 
small numbers, they could not hope to Normanize a vast 
country, where their language soon disappeared and 
their identity was ultimately lost in the general mass. 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 225 

Under such conditions there could be no general trans- 
plantation of Norman institutions. The rulers were 
Norman, as were the holders of the great fiefs, but, to 
speak paradoxically, the most Norman thing about their 
government was its non-Norman character, that is to 
say, its quick assimilation of alien elements and its 
statesmanlike treatment of native customs and institu- 
tions. The Norman leaders were too wise to attempt 
an impossible Normanizatioity 

The policy of toleration in political and religious 
matters had its beginnings in the early days of the Nor- 
man occupation, but it received a broad application 
only in the course of the conquest of Sicily by the Great 
Count, and was first fully and systematically carried 
out by his son Roger II. In religion this meant the full- 
est liberty for Greeks, Jews, and Mohammedans, and 
even the maintenance of the hierarchy of the Greek 
Church and the encouragement and enrichment of 
Basilian monasteries along with the Benedictine foun- 
dations which were marked objects of Norman generos- 
ity. In law it meant the preservation of local rights and 
customs and of the usages of the several distinct ele- 
ments in the population, Latin and Greek, Hebrew and 
Saracen. In local administration it involved the reten- 
tion of the local dignitaries of the cities and the Byzan- 
tine offices of the strategos and the catepan, as well as 
the fiscal arrangements established by the Saracens in 
Sicily. And finally in the central government itself, the 






226 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

need of dealing wisely and eflfectively with the various 
peoples of the kingdom necessitated the employment 
of men familiar with each of them, and the maintenance 
of a secretarial bureau which issued documents in 
Greek and Arabic as well as in Latin. 

It was in the central administration that Roger II 
faced his freshest problem, which was nothing less than 
the creation of a strong central government for a king- 
dom which had never before been united under a single 
resident ruler. His method was frankly eclectic. We 
are told that he made a point of inquiring carefully into 
the practices of other kings and countries and adopt- 
ing anything in them which seemed to him valuable, 
and that he drew to his court from every land, regard- 
less of speech and faith, men who were wise in counsel 
or distinguished in war, among whom the brilliant ad- 
miral George of Antioch is a conspicuous example. 
Nevertheless we should err if we thought of him as 
making a mere artificial composite. The Calabria of 
his youth had preserved a stiff tradition of Byzantine 
administration, and the Mohammedans of Sicily had 
an even stronger bureaucracy at work. Roger's capital 
was at Palermo, and it was natural that the Greek 
and Saracen institutions of Sicily and Calabria should 
prove the formative influences in his government as it 
was extended to the newly acquired and less centralized 
regions of the mainland. There was free adaptation and 
use of experience, but the loose feudal methods of the 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 227 

Normans were profoundly modified by the bureaucratic 
traditions of the East. 

The central point in the government lay, as in the 
states beyond the Alps, in the curia of feudal vassals and 
particularly in its more permanent nucleus of house- 
hold ofhcials and immediate advisers of the king; But 
whereas in the other parts of western Europe the feudal 
baronage still prevailed exclusively and gave way but 
slowly before the growth of specialized training and 
competence, the professional element was present in the 
Sicilian curia from an early period in the logothetes and 
emirs which Roger II had taken over from the earlier 
organization. The chancery, with its Latin, Greek, and 
Arabic branches, was inevitably a more complicated 
institution than in the other western kingdoms, and its 
documents imitated Byzantine and papal usage, even 
in externals. At one point, however, it shows close par- 
allelisms with the Anglo-Norman chancery, namely in 
the free use of those mandata or administrative writs 
which are still rare in the secular states of the twelfth 
century; and if we remember that their employment 
constitutes the surest index of the efficiency of a mediae- 
val administrative system, we must conclude, what is 
evident in other ways, that the most vigorous govern- 
ments of the period were the two Norman kingdoms. 
In judicial matters the parallel is also instructive. 
Here a professional class had existed in the south from 
the outset as an inheritance from the Byzantine period, 



228 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

and it early makes its appearance in the curia in the 
person of a group of justices who in time seem com- 
pletely to absorb the judicial functions of the larger 
body. At the same time the Norman barons were util- 
ized for the royal justiciars which King Roger estab- 
lished throughout all parts of his kingdom. Parallel to 
these provincial justices ran provincial chamberlains, 
and over them there were later established master jus- 
tices and master chamberlains for the great districts of 
Apulia and Capua, all subject to the central curia. 

The fiscal system was especially characteristic. 
Roger's biographer tells us that the king spent his spare 
time in close supervision of the receipts and expendi- 
tures of his government, and that everything relating 
to the accounts was carefully kept in writing. Begin- 
ning with his reign we have documentary evidence of a 
branch of the curia, called in Arabic diwan, in Greek 
o-eKperov, and in Latin either duana or secretum, and 
acting as a central financial body for the whole king- 
dom. It kept voluminous registers, called in Arabic 
defUir, and as its officers and clerks were largely Sara- 
cens, it seems plainly to go back to Saracenic anteced- 
ents. There are, however, some traces on the mainland 
of careful descriptions of lands and serfs like those 
which it extracted from its records in Sicily under the 
name of platece, so that Byzantine survivals should also 
be taken into account in studying the origin of the in- 
stitution. Indeed this whole system presupposes elabo- 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 229 

rate surveys and registers of the land and its inhab- 
itants such as were made in the Egypt of the Ptolemies 
and, less completely, in the Roman empire, and such as 
meet us, in a ruder and simpler form, in that unique 
northern record, the Domesday survey of 1086, itself 
perhaps suggested by some knowledge of the older sys- 
tem in Italy. No one can fail to note the striking analo- 
gies between the Sicilian duana and the Anglo-Norman 
exchequer, but the disappearance of all records of the 
southern bureau precludes any comparison of their 
actual organization and procedure. The only parallel 
records which have reached us are the registers of feudal 
holdings, which exhibit noteworthy similarities in the 
tenures of the two kingdoms. 

Such feudal institutions were evidently a matter of 
common inheritance, but any connections indicated by 
similar administrative arrangements were doubtless 
due to later imitation from one side or the other. Roger 
II in Sicily and Henry I and Henry II in England were 
at work upon much the same sort of governmental prob- 
lem, and Roger was not alone in looking to other lands 
for suggestions. Among the foreigners whom Roger 
drew into his service we find Englishmen such as his 
chancellor, Robert of Selby, and one of his chaplains 
and fiscal officers, Thomas Brown, who later returned 
to his native land to fill an honored place in the ex- 
chequer of Henry II. There was constant intercourse 
between the two kingdoms in the twelfth century, and 



230 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

abundant opportunity to keep one government in- 
formed of the administrative experiments of the other. 
In general, however, the Sicilian monarchy was of a far 
more absolute and Oriental type than is found among 
the northern Normans or anywhere else In western 
Europe. The king's court, with its harem and eunuchs, 
resembled that of the Fatlmite caliphs; his ideas of 
royal power were modelled upon the empire of Con- 
stantinople. The only contemporary portrait of King 
Roger which has reached us, the mosaic of the church 
of the Martorana at Palermo, represents him clothed in 
the dalmatic of the apostolic legate and the imperial 
costume of Byzantium, and receiving the crown di- 
^"^^ rectly from the hands of Christ ; and a similar portrayal 
of the coronation of King William II shows that the 
scene was meant to be typical of the divine right of the 
king, responsible to no earthly authority. Theocratic 
in principle, the Sicilian monarchy drew its Inspiration 
from the law-books of Justinian as well as from the liv- 
ing example on the eastern throne. The series of laws 
or assizes issued by King Roger naturally reflects the 
composite character of the Norman state. The mass of 
local custom is not superseded, the feudal obligations of 
V the vassals are clearly recognized, influences of canon law 
and Teutonic custom are clearly traceable, indeed the 
northern conception of the king's peace may have been 
their starting-point; but the great body of these de- 
crees flows directly from the Roman law, as preserved 



o< 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 231 

and modified by the Byzantine emperors. The royal 
power is everywhere exalted, often in phrases where the 
king is substituted for the emperor of the Roman origi- 
nal, and the law of treason is applied in detail to the 
protection of royal documents, royal coins, and royal 
officers. Even to question the king's ordinances or de- 
cisions is on a par with sacrilege. 

The test of such phrases was the possession of ade- 
quate military and financial resources. Of the strength 
of King Roger's army his long and successful wars offer 
sufficient evidence; the great register of his military 
fiefs, the so-called Catalogue of the Barons, indicates 
that the feudal service could be increased when neces- 
sity demanded, while contingents of Saracen troops 
were as valuable to him as they had been to his father. 
Much the same can be said of his navy, for the safety of 
the Sicilian kingdom and its position in Mediterranean 
politics depended in large measure upon sea power, and 
Roger's fleet has a distinguished record in his Italian 
and African campaigns. Army and navy and civil ser- 
vice, however, rested ultimately upon the royal treasury, 
and among its contemporaries the Sicilian kingdom en- 
joyed a deserved reputation for great wealth. Its re- 
sources consisted partly in the products of the soil, such 
as the grain and cotton and peltry which were exported 
from Sicily itself; partly in manufactures, as in the case 
of the silk industry which King Roger developed in 
Palermo; and partly in the unrivalled facilities for trade 



(-0^- 



232 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

which were presented by its many harbors and its ad- 
vantageous location with respect to the great sea routes. 
Under the Norman kings the commerce of the southern 
kingdom was passive, rather than active, that is to say, 
it was carried on, not mainly by its own cities, such as 
Bari and Amalfi, which had enjoyed great prosperity 
in the Byzantine period and lost their local independ- 
ence under the Normans, but by commercial powers 
from without — Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. The relative 
importance of each of these varied with the vicissitudes 
of Italian politics, but among them they shared the ex- 
ternal trade of the kingdom. We find the Venetians on 
the eastern coast, the Genoese and Pisans at Salerno 
and the chief ports of Sicily, where they had special 
warehouses and often considerable colonies; and the 
earliest commercial records of Genoa and Pisa, notably 
the register of the Genoese notary, John the Scribe, 
enable us to follow their business from merchant to 
merchant and from port to port. Sicily served not only 
as a place for the exchange of exports for foreign prod- 
ucts, the cloth of northern Italy and France and the 
spices and fabrics of the East, but also as a stage in 
the trade with the Orient by the great highway of the 
Straits of Messina or with Africa and Spain by way of 
Palermo and the ports of the western and southern coast. 
From all this the king took his toll. Without foregoing 
] any of their feudal or domanial revenues or extensive 
monopolies, Roger and his successors tapped this grow- 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 233 

ing commerce by port dues and by tariffs on exports 
and imports, thus securing their ready money from that 
merchant class upon which the future monarchies of 
western Europe were to build. The income from Pa- 
lermo alone was said to be greater than that which the 
king of England derived from his whole kingdom. 

It is evident, even from this brief outline, that the 
Sicilian state was not only a skilful blending of political 
elements of diverse origin, but also that it stood well in 
advance of its contemporaries in all that goes to make 
a modern type of government. Its kings legislated at a 
time when lawmaking was rare; they had a large in- 
come in money when other sovereigns lived from feudal 
dues and the produce of their domains ; they had a well 
established bureaucracy when elsewhere both central 
and local government had been completely feudalized ; 
they had a splendid capital when other courts were still 
ambulatory. Its only rival in these respects, the Anglo- 
Norman kingdom of the north, was inferior in financial 
resources and had made far less advance in the develop- 
ment of the class of trained officials through whom the 
progress of European administration was to be realized. 
Judged by these tests, it is not too much to call the 
kingdom of Roger and his successors the first modern 
state, just as Roger's non-feudal policy, far-sightedness, 
and diplomatic skill have sometimes won for him the 
title of the first modern king. This designation, I am 
well aware, has more commonly been reserved for the 



234 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

younger of Sicily's "two baptized sultans,"^ Freder- 
ick II — stupor mundi et immutator mirabilts, "the won- 
der of the world and a marvellous innovator." No one 
can follow the career of this most gifted and fascinating 
figure without feeling the modern elements in his char- 
acter and in his administration of the Sicilian state. 
His government stands ahead of its contemporaries 
in the thirteenth century as does that of Roger in the 
twelfth, and the more recent naturally seems the more 
modern. It is not, however, clear that the relative su- 
periority was greater, and recent studies have made 
plain, what was not at first realized, that considerable 
portions of Frederick's legislation and of his adminis- 
trative system go back to his Norman predecessors, 
some of them to Roger himself. After all it is not the 
historian's business to award prizes for being modern, 
especially when it is not always plain in what moder- 
nity consists. The main point is to recognize the striking 
individuality of the Sicilian state in directions which 
other states were in time to follow, and to remember 
that this individuality was a continuous thing and not a 
creation of the second Frederick. Moreover, as we shall 
shortly see, what is true in the field of government is 
also true in the field of civilization : the brilliant cos- 
mopolitan culture of the thirteenth century is a di- 
rect development from similar conditions under King 
Roger. 

, * The phrase is Amari's: Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia, in, p. 365. 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 235 

The culture of the Norman kingdom was even more 
strikingly composite than its government. Both his- 
torically and geographically Sicily was the natural 
meeting-point of Greek, Arabic, and Latin civilization, 
and a natural avenue for the transmission of eastern art 
and learning to the West. Moreover, in the intellectual 
field the splendor of the Sicilian kingdom coincides 
with that movement which is often called the renais- 
sance of the twelfth century and which consisted in 
considerable measure in the acquisition of new knowl- 
edge from the Greeks of the East and the Saracens of 
Sicily and Spain. Sicily was not the only channel 
through which the wisdom of the East flowed west- 
ward, for there were scholars from northern Italy who 
visited Constantinople and there was a steady diffusion 
of Saracen learning through the schools of Spain. No- 
where else, however, did Latin, Greek, and Arabic civ- 
ilization live side by side in peace and toleration, and 
nowhere else was the spirit of the renaissance more 
clearly expressed in the policy of the rulers. 

The older Latin culture of the southern kingdom had 
its centre and in large measure its source at Monte Cas- 
sino, mother of the Benedictine monasteries through- 
out the length and breadth of western Christendom. 
Founded by St. Benedict in 529, this establishment still 
maintains the unique record of fourteen centuries of mo- 
nastic history and of more than forty generations of fol- 
lowers of the Benedictine rule, keeping age after age 



236 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

their vigils of labor, prayer, and fasting, but feasting 
their uncloistered eyes — per gV occhi almeno non v' b 
clausural — upon the massive ranges of the central 
Apennines and the placid valley of the Garlgliano, 
"the Land of Labor and the Land of Rest." Its golden 
age was the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, when 
its relations with the Normans and the Papacy kept it 
in the forefront of Italian politics, when two of its ab- 
bots sat upon the throne of St. Peter, and when the 
greatest of them, Desiderius — as Pope known as Victor 
III — built a great basilica which was adorned by 
workmen from Constantinople with mosaics and with 
the great bronze doors which are the chief surviving 
evidence of its early splendor. Men of learning were 
drawn to the monastery, like the monk Constantlne the 
African, skilled in the science of the Greek and Arabic 
physicians, whose works he translated Into Latin. 
Manuscripts of every sort were copied in the character- 
istic south-Italian hand, the Beneventan script, which 
serves as a sure index of the intellectual activity 
throughout the southern half of the peninsula In this 
period — sermons and service-books, theological com- 
mentaries and lives of the saints, but also the law-books 
of Justinian and the writings of the Latin poets and 
historians with their commentators. Indeed without 
the scribes of Monte Cassino the world would have lost 
some of its most precious monuments of antiquity and 
the early Middle Ages, Including on the mediaeval side 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 237 

the oldest of the papal registers, that of John VIII, and 
on the classical, Varro, Apuleius, and the greater part 
of the works of Tacitus. Nowhere else is the work of 
the monasteries as the preservers of ancient learning 
more manifest. 

The home of Greek learning in Italy was likewise to 
be found in monasteries, in those Basilian foundations 
which had spread over Calabria and the Basilicata in 
the ninth and tenth centuries and now under Norman 
protection sent out new colonies like the abbey of San 
Salvatore at Messina. Enriched with lands and rents 
and feudal holdings, they also set themselves to the 
building up of libraries by copies and by manuscripts 
brought from the East; but so far as we can judge from 
the ancient catalogues and from the scattered frag- 
ments which survive their dispersion, these collections 
were almost entirely biblical and theological in charac- 
ter, including however splendid examples of calligraphy 
such as the text of the Gospels, written in silver letters 
on purple vellum and adorned with beautiful minia- 
tures, which is still preserved in the cathedral of Ros- 
sano. 

Meanwhile, and largely as a result of the constant 
relations between southern Italy and the Greek East, 
learning had spread beyond monastery walls and ec- 
clesiastical subjects, and had begun to attract the at- 
tention of men from the north. An English scholar, 
Adelard of Bath, who visited the south at the beginning 



238 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

of the twelfth century, found a Latin bishop of Syracuse 
skilled in all the mathematical arts, a Greek philosopher 
of Magna Grsecia who discoursed on natural philoso- 
phy, and the greatest medical school of Europe in the 
old Lombard capital at Salerno, early famed as the city 
of Hippocrates and the seat of the oldest university 
in the West. A generation later, another Englishman, 
the humanist John of Salisbury, studies philosophy 
with a Greek interpreter in Apulia and drinks the 
heavy wines of the Sicilian chancellor; while still others 
profit by translations of Greek philosophical and mathe- 
matical works from the Italian libraries. The distinc- 
tive element in southern learning lay, however, not on 
the Latin side, but in its immediate contact with Greek 
and Arabic scholarship, and the chief meeting-point of 
these various currents of culture was the royal court at 
Palermo, direct heir to the civilization of Saracen 
Sicily. 

The Sicilian court, like the kingdom, was many- 
tongued and cosmopolitan, its praises being sung alike 
by Arabic travellers and poets, by grave Byzantine 
ecclesiastics, and by Latin scholars of Italy and the 
north. A Greek archimandrite, Nellos Doxopatrios, 
produced at King Roger's request a History oj the Five 
Patriarchates directed against the supremacy of the 
Pope of Rome; a Saracen, Edrisi, prepared under his 
direction the greatest treatise of Arabic geography, 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 239 

celebrated long afterward as "King Roger's Book." 
Under William I the chief literary figures are likewise 
connected with the court: Eugene the Emir, a Greek 
poet thoroughly conversant with Arabic and deeply 
versed in the mathematics and astronomy of the an- 
cients ; and Henricus Aristippus, archdeacon of Catania 
and for a time chief minister of the king, a collector of 
manuscripts, a translator of Plato, Aristotle, and Dio- 
genes Laertius, and an investigator of the phenomena 
connected with the eruption of Etna in a spirit which 
reminds us less of the age of the schoolmen than of the 
death of the younger Pliny. Such a literary atmosphere 
was peculiarly favorable to the production of transla- 
tions from the Greek and Arabic into Latin, and we can 
definitely connect with Sicily the versions which made 
known to western Europe the Meno and Phcedo of 
Plato, portions of the Meteorology and of certain other 
works of Aristotle, the more advanced writings of Eu- 
clid, and the Almagest of Ptolemy, the greatest of an- 
cient and mediaeval treatises on astronomy. In a very 
different field we have from Roger's reign a Greco - 
Arabic psalter and an important group of New Testa- 
ment manuscripts. "While we Germans were in many 
respects barbarians," says Springer, "the ruling classes 
in Sicily enjoyed the almost over-ripe fruits of an 
ancient culture and combined Norman vigor of youth 
with Oriental refinement of life." * 

1 Bilder aus der neueren Kunstgeschichte, i, p. 159. 



240 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

There were lacking in the twelfth century the poetic 
and imaginative elements which flourished at the court 
of Frederick II, but on the scientific and philosophical 
sides there is clear continuity in the intellectual history 
of the south from Roger II and William to Frederick II 
and Manfred. At one point it is even probable that an 
actual material connection can be traced, for the collec- 
tion of Greek manuscripts upon which Manfred set 
great store seems to have had its origin in codices 
brought from Constantinople to Palermo under the first 
Norman kings; and as Manfred's library probably 
passed into the possession of the Popes, it became the 
basis of the oldest collection of Greek manuscripts in 
the Europe of the humanists. Within its limits the 
intellectual movement at the court of King Roger and 
his son had many of the elements of a renaissance, and 
like the great revival of the fourteenth century, it owed 
much to princely favor. It was at the kings' request 
that translations were undertaken and the works of 
Neilos and Edrisi written, and it was no accident that 
two such scholars as Aristippus and Eugene of Palermo 
occupied high places in the royal administration. In 
their patronage of learning, as well as in the enlightened 
and anti-feudal character of their government, the 
Sicilian sovereigns, from Roger to Frederick II, belong 
to the age of the new statecraft and the humanistic 
revival. 

The art of the Sicilian kingdom, like its learning and 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 241 

its government, was the product of many diverse ele- 
ments, developing on the mainland into a variety of 
local and provincial types, but in Sicily combined and 
harmonized under the guiding will of the royal court. 
Traces of direct Norman influence occur, as in the tow- 
ers and exterior decoration of the cathedral of Cefalii or 
in the plan of that great resort of Norman pilgrims, the 
church of St. Nicholas at Bari; but in the main the 
Normans, in Bertaux's phrase, contributed little more 
than the cement which bound together the artistic ma- 
terials furnished by others.^ These materials were 
abundant and various, the Roman basilica and the 
Greek cupola, the bronze doors and the brilliant mosa- 
ics of Byzantine craftsmen, the domes, the graceful 
arches and ceilings, and the intricate arabesques of 
Saracen art; yet in the churches and palaces of Sicily 
they were fused into a beautiful and harmonious whole 
which still dazzles us with its splendor. The chief ex- 
amples of this 'Norman' style are to be found at 
Cefalii, King Roger's cherished foundation, where he 
prepared his last resting-place^ in the great porphyry 
sarcophagus later transported to Palermo, and where 
Byzantine artists worked in blue and gold wonderful 
pictures of Christ and the Virgin and stately figures of 
archangels and saints of the Eastern Church; at Mon- 
reale, the royal mount of William II, commanding the 
inexhaustible wealth of Palermo's Golden Shell and 
* Vart dans I'ltalie mSridionale, p. 344. 



242 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

serving as the incomparable site of a great cathedral, 
with storied mosaics of every color covering its walls 
and vaulted ceiling like an illuminated missal, and with 
cloisters of rare and piercing beauty ; and between them, 
in space and time, the palaces and churches of Palermo 
— the church of the Martorana, built in the Byzantine 
style and endowed with a Greek library by Roger's ad- 
miral George of Antioch, the Saracenic edifices of San 
Cataldo and San Giovanni degli Eremiti, and the un- 
surpassed glories of the Cappella Palatina — all set 
against the brilliant background of the Sicilian capital, 
which owes to the Norman kings its unique place in the 
history of art. 

Welcoming merchants and strangers of every land 
and race, containing within itself organized communi- 
ties of Greeks, Mohammedans, and Jews, each with its 
own churches, mosques, or synagogues, the Palermo of 
the twelfth century was a great cosmopolitan city and 
the natural centre of a Mediterranean art. Midway 
between Cordova and Constantinople, between Africa 
and Italy, it laid them all under contribution. Travel- 
lers celebrated the luxuriant gardens of the city and its 
surrounding plain, with the vast fields of sugar cane and 
groves of orange, fig, and lemon, olive and palm and 
pomegranate, its commodious harbor and its spacious 
and busy streets, its gorgeous fabrics and abundance of 
foreign wares, its walls and palaces and places of wor- 
ship. "A stupendous city," says the Spanish traveller, 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 243 

Ibn Giobair,^ "elegant, graceful, and splendid, rising 
before one like a temptress" . . . and offering its king — 
"may Allah take them from him! — every pleasure in 
the world." An artist's city, too, distinguished by the 
qualities which Goethe saw in it, "the purity of its 
light, the delicacy of its lines and tones, the harmony 
of earth and sea and sky." 

From the highest point in the capital rose the royal 
palace, which still retains, in spite of the transforma- 
tions of eight centuries, something of the massiveness 
and the splendor of its Norman original, of which it 
preserves the great Pisan tower, — once the repository 
of the royal treasure, — the royal chapel, and one of the 
state apartments of King Roger's time. Its terraces and 
gardens have long since disappeared, with their marble 
lions and plashing fountains which resembled the Al- 
hambra or the great pleasure-grounds of the Moham- 
medan East; but we can easily call them to life with 
the aid of the Saracen poets and of the remains of the 
other royal residences which surrounded the city "like 
a necklace of pearls." Here, amid his harem and his 
eunuchs, the officers of his court and his retinue of 
Mohammedan servants, the king lived much after the 
manner of an Oriental potentate. On state occasions he 
donned the purple and gold of the Greek emperors or 
the sumptuous vestments of red samite, embroidered 

^ His description is translated by Amari, Biblioteca araho-sicula (Tu- 
rin, 1888), I, pp. 155 Jf.; and by Schiaparelli, Ibn Gubayr (Rome, 1906), 
pp. 328 ff. Cf . Waern, Mediaval Sicily, pp. 64 ff. 



244 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

with golden tigers and camels and Arabic invocations 
to the Christian Redeemer, which are still preserved 
among the treasures of the Holy Roman Empire at 
Vienna. And when, on festivals, he entered the palace 
chapel, Latin in its ground-plan, Greek and Arabic in 
its ornamentation, the atmosphere was likewise Orien- 
tal. As described at its dedication in 1140, with the 
starry heavens of its ceiling and the flowery meadows 
of its pavement, the chapel preserves its fundamental 
features to-day. Dome and choir are dominated by 
great Byzantine figures of Christ, accompanied by 
Byzantine saints and scenes with Greek inscriptions, all 
executed with the fullest brilliancy of which mosaics 
are capable, while the stalactite ceiling, "dripping with 
all the elaborate richness of Saracen art," seems "to 
re-create some forgotten vision of the Arabian Nights.^* 
Harmonious in design yet infinitely varied in detail, 
rich beyond belief in color and in line, reflecting alike 
the dim rays of its pendent lamps or the full light of the 
southern sun, the Cappella Palatina is the fullest and 
most adequate expression of the many-sided art of the 
Norman kingdom and the unifying force of the Norman 
kings. 

Brilliant but ephemeral, precocious but lacking in 
permanent results — such are the judgments com- 
monly passed upon the Sicilian kingdom and its civili- 
zation. At best the kingdom seems to reach no farther 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 245 

than Frederick II, and of him Freeman has said that, 
though qualified by genius to start some great move- 
ment or begin some new era, he seemed fated to stand 
at the end of everything which he touched — the medi- 
aeval empire, the Sicilian kingdom, the Norman-Ho- 
henstaufen line.^ In the field of government these 
statements are in the main true: the rapid changes of 
dynasties and the deep political decline into which the 
south ultimately fell destroyed the unity of its political 
development and nullified the work of Norman state- 
building, so that the enduring results of Norman states- 
manship and Norman law must be sought in the north 
and not in Italy. That, however, is not the whole of the 
story, and in the field of culture influences less palpable, 
but none the less real, flowed from the Norman stream 
into the general currents of European civilization. So 
long as the Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries was looked upon as simply the negation of the 
Middle Ages by a return to classical antiquity, figures 
such as King Roger and Frederick II were merely 
'sports,' isolated flashes of genius and modernity with- 
out any relation to their own times or to the greater 
movement which followed. Since, however, we have 
come to view the Renaissance in its larger aspects as 
far more than a classical revival, its relations to the 
Middle Ages are seen to have been much more intimate 

* "The Emperor Frederick the Second," in Historical Essays, first 
series, p. 291. 



246 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

and important than was once supposed. The evolution 
is at times rapid, but the Trecento grows out of the cen- 
turies which preceded as naturally as it grew into the 
Quattrocento which followed. The place of Italy in this 
process is universally recognized ; the place of southern 
Italy is sometimes overlooked. We are too prone to 
forget that Niccola Pisano was also called Nicholas of 
Apulia; that Petrarch owed much to his sojourn at the 
Neapolitan court; that Boccaccio learned his Greek 
from a Calabrian; that the first notes of a new Italian 
literature were sounded at the court of Frederick II. 
Many phases of the relation between south and north 
in this transitional period are still obscure, but of the 
significance of the southern contribution there is now 
reasonable assurance. Moreover, the continuity be- 
tween the intellectual movement under Roger and 
William I and that under Frederick II and later can be 
followed in some detail in the history of individual 
manuscripts and authors. When humanists like Pe- 
trarch and Salutati read Plato's Phcedo or Ptolemy's 
Almagest, their libraries show that they used the Latin 
versions of the Sicilian translators of the twelfth cen- 
tury. The learning of the southern kingdom may have 
been a faint light, but it was handed on, not extin- 
guished. 

For our general understanding of the Normans and 
their work, it is well that we should trace them in the 
lands where their direct influence grows faint and dim, 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 247 

as well as in those where their descendants still rule. 
Only a formal and mechanical view of history seeks to 
ticket off particular races against particular regions as 
the sole sources of population and power; only false 
national pride conceives of any people as continually in 
the vanguard of civilization. Races are mixed things, 
institutions and civilization are still more complex, and 
no people can claim to be a unique and permanent 
source of light and strength. Outside of Normandy the 
Normans were but a small folk, and sooner or later they 
inevitably lost their identity. They did their work pre- 
eminently not as a people apart, but as a group of lead- 
ers and energizers, the little leaven that leaveneth the 
whole lump. Wherever they went, they showed a mar- 
vellous power of initiative and of assimilation; if the 
initiative is more evident in England, the assimilation 
is more manifest in Sicily. The penalty for such activity 
is rapid loss of identity; the reward is a large share in 
the general development of civilization. If the Nor- 
mans paid the penalty, they also reaped the reward, 
and they were never more Norman than in adopting 
the statesmanlike policy of toleration and assimilation 
which led to their ultimate extinction. Plus ga change, 
plus c'est la meme chose! 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The best general account of the Norman kingdom is that of Cha- 
landon, who carries its history to 1 194 and gives also a provisional 



248 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY 

description of its institutions and an unsatisfactory chapter on its 
civilization. E. Caspar, Roger II (Innsbruck, 1904), is the best book 
on the reign; Curtis, Roger of Sicily, is convenient. G. B. Siragusa, // 
regno di Guglielmo I (Palermo, 1885-86), and I. La Lumia, Storia delta 
Sicilia sotto Guglielmo il Buono (Florence, 1867), need revision. For 
Constance, T. Toeche, Kaiser Heinrich VI (Leipzig, 1867), is still 
useful. 

The treatment of Sicilian institutions by E. Mayer, Italienische 
Verfassungsgeschichte (Leipzig, 1909), is too juristic. There is an ex- 
cellent book on the chancery by K. A. Kehr, Die Urkunden der nor- 
mannisch-sicilischen Konige (Innsbruck, 1902) ; and on the duana 
there are important monographs by Amari, in the Memorie dei Lincei, 
third series, il, pp. 409-38 (1878); and by C. A. Garufi, in Archivio 
storico italiano, fifth series, xxvil, pp. 225-63 (1901). For local ad- 
ministration see the valuable study of Miss E. Jamison, The Norman 
Administration of Apulia and Capua, in Papers of the British School at 
Rome, VI, pp. 211-481 (1913). See also H. Niese, Die Gesetzgebung der 
normannischen Dynastie im Regnum Siciliae (Halle, 1910) ; Haskins, 
"England and Sicily in the Twelfth Century," in English Historical 
Review, xxvi, pp. 433-47, 641-65 (1911); W. Cohn, Die Geschichte der 
normannisch-sicilischen Flotte (Breslau, 1910); R. Straus, Die Juden 
im Konigreich Sizilien (Heidelberg, 1 910); F. Zechbauer, Das mittel- 
alterliche Strafrecht Siziliens (Berlin, 1908) ; and various studies in the 
Miscellanea Salinas (Palermo, 1907) and the Centenario Michele Amari 
(Palermo, 1910). The commerce of the Sicilian kingdom is described 
by A. Schaube, Handelsgeschichte der romanischen Volker (Munich, 
1906). 

For Monte Cassino in this period see E. A. Loew, The Beneventan 
Script (Oxford, 1914), with the works there cited; R. Palmarocchi, 
L'abbazia di Montecassino e la conquista normanna (Rome, 1913). On 
the Greek monasteries, see Gay, L'ltalie meridionale; P. Batiffol, 
L'abbaye de Rossano (Paris, 1891); K. Lake, "The Greek Monasteries 
in South Italy," in Journal of Theological Studies, iv, v (1903-04); 
and F. LoParco, Scolario-Saba, in Atti of the Naples Academy, new 
series, I (1910). The best account of Saracen culture in Sicily is still 
that of Amari. On the south-Italian and Sicilian translators, see O. 
Hartwig, "Die Uebersetzungsliteratur Unteritaliens in der norman- 



THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 249 

nisch-staufischen Epoche," in Centralblatt fiir Bibliothekswesen, ill, 
pp. i6i-go, 223-25, 505 (1886); Haskins and Lockwood, The Sicilian 
Translators of the Twelfth Century and the First Latin Version of Ptol- 
emy's Almagest, in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, xxi, pp. 
75-102 (1910); Haskins, ibid., xxiii, pp. 155-166; xxv, pp. 87-105. 
On the Sicilian origin of the Greek MSS. of the papal library, see J. 
L. Heiberg, in Oversigt of the Danish Academy, l89i,pp. 305-18; F. 
Ehrle, in Festgabe Anton de Waal (Rome, 1913), pp. 348-51. The con- 
nection of the intellectual movement of the twelfth century with the 
renaissance under Frederick II is well brought out by Niese, "Zur 
Geschichte des geistigen Lebens am Hofe Kaiser Friedrichs II," in 
Historische Zeitschrift, cvill, pp. 473-540 (1912). In general see F. 
Novati, Le origini, in course of publication in the Storia letteraria 
d'ltalia (Milan, since 1897). 

The development of art in the south in this period is treated by A, 
Venturi, Storiu delV arte italiana (Rome, 1901 ff.), 11, ch. 3; iii, ch. 2. 
See also C. Diehl, Vart byzantin dans Vltalie meridionale (Paris, 
1894). For the continental territories there is an excellent account in 
E. Bertaux, L'art dans Vltalie meridionale (Paris, 1904). There is 
nothing so good for Sicily, although there are monographs on particu- 
lar edifices. Diehl, Palerme et Syracuse (Paris, 1907), is a good sketch 
with illustrations; Miss C. Waern, Mediaeval Sicily (London, 1910), is 
more popular. Freeman has a readable essay on "The Normans at 
Palermo," in his Historical Essays, third series, pp. 437-76. See also 
A. Springer, "Die mittelalterliche Kunst in Palermo," in his Bilder 
aus der neueren Kunstgeschichte (Bonn, 1886), i, pp. 157-208; and 
A. Goldschmidt, "Die normannischen Konigspalaste in Palermo," in 
Zeitschrift fiir Bauwesen, XLViii, coll. 541-90 (1898). Interesting as- 
pects of twelfth-century Palermo are depicted in the Bern codex of 
Peter of Eboli, reproduced by Siragusa for the Istituto Storico Ita- 
liano (1905) and by Rota for the new edition of Muratori (1904-10). 
Surviving portions of the royal costume are reproduced by F. Bock, 
Die Kleinodien des heil.-romischen Reiches (Vienna, 1864). 

THE END 



INDEX 



Abacus, 106/. 

Abruzzi, 196, 204, 222 /. 

Adams, Henry, quoted, 12, 22, 188 /. 

Adelaide, countess, 210. 

Adelard of Bath, 177, 179, 238. 

Africa, 196/., 222, 232. 

Aime of Monte Cassino, 13, 200/. 

Alengon, 63, 178. 

Alexander II, Pope, 74, 79, 165, 175. 

Alfred, king, 34. 

Alphonso VIII, king, 90. 

Amalfi, 197/., 204, 213, 232. 

Amari, M., 216, 248; quoted, 234. 

Anacletus II, Pope, 210. 

Andeli, 134. 

Angers, 61-63. 

Angoulgme, 160. 

Anjou, counts of, 61, 85; relations 

with Normandy, 61-63, 85, 100, 

112, 131, 136/. 
Anna Comnena, quoted, 201. 
Anselm, 175-78. 

Antioch, 212; principality, 214-16. 
Apulia, 186, 197-211, 222 /., 228, 

238, 246. 
Aquitaine, 87/., 90, 100, 120/., 136. 
Arabic elements in Sicilian state, 

226-30, 235, 238-44. 
Architecture, Norman, 9-12, 102, 

186-89; Sicilian, 189, 241-44. 
Archives, Norman, 9, 66/., 105, 178. 
Argentan, 10, 71, 133, 139, 153. 
Arlette, mother of William the 

Conqueror, 53, 166. 
Arnulf of Chocques, patriarch, 212. 
Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux, 167. 
Arthur, duke of Brittany, 136-39. 
Assizes, Anglo-Norman, 94, 100, 

in/., 161; Sicilian, 230/., 234. 
Aversa, 200, 204, 206. 
Avranches, 172, 175, 178. 



Avranchin, 28. 
Avre, 7. 

Bailli, 103, 145. 

Barfleur, 132, 160. 

Bari, 189, 197, 202, 232, 241. 

Baudri of Bourgueil, 76. 

Bayeux, 10, 46, 49, 67, 76, 150 /., 

162, 166, 172, 187; Black Book, III. 

See Odo, Turold, Richard, Philip 

d'Harcourt. 
Bayeux Tapestry, 76/., 80, 84, 151, 

167. 
Bayonne, 1 61. 

Bee, 171, 185; schools, 175 /.; li- 
brary, 177-80. 
Becket, 4, 100, 118, 168. 
Bellgme, 154. 
Benevento, 198, 203. 
Benoit de Sainte-More, 184. 
Bertaux, E., quoted, 197, 241. 
Bessin, 10, 28. 
Bibliographical notes, 24/., 51, 83/., 

114/., 147, 189-91, 216/., 247-49. 
Bisignano, 201. 
Bocage, 10. 
Boccaccio, 246. 
Bocherville, Saint-Georges de, 169, 

187. 
Bohemond I, prince of Antioch, 207, 

213-16. 
Bohmer, H., quoted, 165. 
Bonneval, 154. 
Bordeaux, 88. 
Boutmy, E., quoted, loi. 
Breteuil, 154, 160. 
Brittany, 6-8, 10, 57, 61, 75, 88, 

136-39- 
Bryce, James, Viscount, quoted, 43. 
Buchanan, James, 17/. 
Bury St. Edmund's, 173. 



252 



INDEX 



Caen, lo/., 71, 133, 139, 143, 153. 

160, 166, 172, 184; abbeys, 12, 

58, 160, 163, 171, 174, 186-88, 213. 
Calabria, 176, 198, 201-11, 222, 226, 

237, 246. 
Caliphs, Fatimite, 196, 230. 
Campania, 197, 222. 
Canada, Normans in, 3/., 13, 16. 
Canaries, Normans in, 4, 13. 
Canne, 199. 
Canosa, 214. 
Canterbury, 56, 81, 175. 
Canute, king, 52, 54, 74, 194. 
Cappella Palatina, 242-44. 
Capua, 198, 207, 223, 228. 
Carentan, 172. 

Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, loi, 173. 
Castles, Norman, 68/., 102, 133-35, 

139. i5o-53r 163, 209. 
Castrogiovanni, 209. 
Caux, 8. 

Cefalu, 189, 241. 
Cerisy, 187. 
Chancery, of Henry II, 96-99; of 

Sicilian kingdom, 226 /. 
Channel Islands, 144/., 172, 184. 
Charlemagne, 18, 31/., 80, 86, 193/. 
Charles VII, king of France, 144. 
Charles of Anjou, king of Naples, 

221. 
Charles the Simple, 27, 45. 
Charte aux Normands, 142. 
Charter, Great, 140, 142. 
Chartres, cathedral, 169-71, 186, 

194; school, 177. 
Chateau Gaillard, 9, 134/., 139. 
Chaucer, his 'povre persoun,' 169, 
Cherbourg, 4/., 59, 162. 
Chinon, 116. 
Chronicle, Anglo-Saxon, quoted, 32, 

34. 55-58. 
Church, Norman, 67, 71 /., 81, 

100, 164 Jf.; the Greek, 198, 203, 

209, 223, 225, 237, 241. 
Civitate, 203. 
Classics, Latin, in Norman libraries, 

179; at Monte Cassino, 235-37; 

Greek, in Sicily, 239/., 246. 



Clermont, 211. 

Clovis, 207. 

Cluny, 164. 

Colombieres, 1 16. 

Commerce, Norman, 4, 73, 81, 
160-63; Sicilian, 231-33, 242; Vik- 
ing, 37- 

Compostela, 16, 193, 217. 

Conan, 163. 

Conches, 154. 

Conquest, Norman, of England, 72- 
81; its results, 81-83, 100^., 145 
/.; of Italy, 198/.; the two com- 
pared, 223-25. 

Constance, empress, 220. 

Constantine the African, 236. 

Constantinople, 194-96, 212, 214, 
235/., 240. 

Corneille, 4, 12. 

Cotentin, 28, 50. 

Courcy, 154. 

Coutances, 169, 172, 200; cathedral, 
ID, 186/. See Geoffrey de Mow- 
bray. 

Coutume de Normandie, 11, 48 /., 
108, 142, 145. 

Crusades, Normans in, 2, 89, 91, 
100, 127-31, 184, 208, 211-17. 

Curia regis, 103, 108, 227/. 

Danegeld, 34, 104. 

Danelaw, 31. 

Daudet, Alphonse, quoted, 5. 

Davis, H. W. C, quoted, 15. 

Delarc, O., quoted, 196. 

Delbriick, H., quoted, 77/. 

Delisle, L., 4, 114, 189/.; quoted, 97. 

Dieppe, 4/., 160. 

Dieulafoy, quoted, 135. 

Dives, 75. 

Domesday, 66, no, 172, 229. 

Domfront, 63, 154, 172. 

Dover, 166. 

Downing, E., 208. 

Drogo of Hauteville, 200-02. 

Duana, 228/. 

Dudo of Saint Quentin, 27, 47, 180. 

Durham, 188. 



INDEX 



253 



Edrisi, 238-40. 

Edward the Confessor, king, 73-75. 

Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen, 89, 
118, 120, 123, 184. 

Emma, queen, 73. 

Empire, Angevin, 85; Eastern, 91, 
94, 129, 197-99, 201 /., 206, 214- 
17, 222, 226-31, 243; German, 
87; Holy Roman, 64, 86, 244; 
Norman, 85-113; its destruction, 
116-39. 

England, Normandy compared with, 
5/.; Northmen in, 32-34; before 
the Normans, 101-03, 223; Nor- 
man Conquest, 52, 72-83; results, 

22/., 100-13; 145 /•. 151 /•; loss 

of Normandy, 139-44. 
Enna, 209. 
Eryx, 208. 
Escorial, 178. 
Ethelred, king, 73. 
Etna, 209, 239. 
Eudes Rigaud, archbishop of Rouen, 

168/., 183. 
Eugene of Palermo, emir, 239 /. 
Eure, 7. 

fivreux, 184, 187. 
Exchequer, 11, 103-08, 142, 229. 
Exmes, 71. 

Falaise, 10, 53, 59, 133, 139, 153. 

Fecamp, 160, 164, 171, 178. 

Feudalism, 60, 64, 93, 133, 136-38, 
233; Norman, 67-69, 82, 145, 149- 
57; in southern Italy, 209, 223-31. 

Finance, Anglo-Norman, 69-71, 
103-08; Sicilian, 225, 228/., 232/. 

Flanders, 61, 75. 

Flaubert, G., 4, 8, 12; quoted, 5. 

Fontevrault, 117. 

France, Normandy as a part of, 6 /., 
16, 18-24, 48; feudal relations 
with Normandy, 63-66; govern- 
ment compared with that of Nor- 
mandy, 64, 69-71; geographical 
unity, 124-26; how it conquered 
and absorbed Normandy, 126-44; 
Norman influence on, 23, 144. 



France, Anatole, quoted, 178. 

Franks, Normandy under, 16, 20/,, 
26. 

Frederick Barbarossa, emperor, 86 
/., 128/. 

Frederick II, king of Sicily and 
emperor, 24, 215, 219-21, 240, 
245/- 

Freeman, E. A., 83; on William the 
Conqueror, 53-56; on the Norman 
Conquest, 73, 83, loi, 145 /. ; on 
the battle of Hastings, 77; on 
Norman castles, 151; on the 
abbeys of Caen, 188; on Freder- 
ick II, 245. 

Fulk Rechin, quoted, 62/. 

Gaeta, 197/. 

Gaimar, 184, 

Gascony, 88-91, 100, 139, 161. 

Gavrai, 172. 

Genoa, 232. 

Geoflfrey, duke of Brittany, 120. 

Geoflfrey Malaterra, quoted, 13, 207. 

Geoffrey Martel, count of Anjou, 

61-63. 
Geoffrey de Mowbray, bishop of 

Coutances, 10, 186/. 
Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of 

Anjou, 85, 89, 99, 112. 
Geoffrey, illegitimate son of 

Henry II, 116. 
George of Antioch, admiral, 226, 242. 
Gilbert Crispin, abbot of West- 
minster, 175. 
Giobair, Ibn, quoted, 243. 
Giraldus Cambrensis, quoted, 117/., 

123. 
Girgenti, 209. 
Gisors, 132/., 135/- 
Glanvill, 108. 
Goethe, 219, 243. 
Greek influences in southern Italy 

and Sicily, 198, 209, 219, 223, 

225-31, 235, 237-46. 
Green, J. R., quoted, 122. 
Gregory VII Pope, 72, 165/., 202, 

204/. 



254 INDEX 



Grentemaisnil, 154. 
Grimoud, 60. 
Guernsey, 144/- 
Gummere, F. B., quoted, 41. 
Guy of Amiens, 76. 

Hamburg, 33. 

Haro, 145. 

Harold, king of England, 73-80, 

Harold Fairhair, 28, 38. 

Hastings, battle of, 75-8o, 84, 151, 
166, 202. 

Hastings, Viking leader, 33. 

Hauteville, house of, 2, 200-02, 207, 
209, 213. See Robert Guiscard, 
Roger. 

Havre, Le, 4/. 

Henricus Aristippus, 239 /. 

Henry I, king of England, 89, 94, 105 
/., 133^ 160, 162/., 181, 184, 229. 

Henry H, king of England, 49, 85, 
133. 219; empire, 86-90; Euro- 
pean position, 87, 90/.; character, 
92-94, 114, 117/.; government, 
93-113, 153, 227-30; death, 116/., 
154; sons, 118-23; relations with 
Philip Augustus, 127 /.; privi- 
leges to Rouen, 161-63. 

Henry V, king of England, 142. 

Henry VI, king of England, 143. 

Henry the Young King, 1 19-21, 123, 

127, 154-57- 
Henry I, king of France, 62/., 65. 
Henry HI, emperor, 201. 
Henry IV, emperor, 205. 
Henry VI, emperor, 220. 
Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, 90. 
Historians, Norman, 47, 154, 180-84. 
Hohenstaufen, in Sicily, 220 /. 
Honorius II, Pope, 210. 
Hugh Capet, 65. 
Hugh of Amiens, archbishop of 

Rouen, 179. 
Hugo, Victor, quoted, 144. 
Humphrey of Hauteville, 200-02. 

Iceland, 3, 12, 31, 43/. 
Ile-de-France, 7, 125. 



Innocent III, Pope, 137. 

Ireland, 22, 31, 33, 57, 85/., 88, 90, 
160, 162/. 

Italy, influence on Normandy, 175; 
Normans in, 181/., 192, 198-211, 
218-49; political condition ca. 
1000, 196-98; relation to Renais- 
sance, 246. 

James, Henry, quoted, 6. 

Jersey, 144/., 184. 

Jerusalem, Normans at, 128, 130. 
167, 193-95. 198/-. 212, 214. 

Jews, in Sicily, 225, 242. 

Joan of Arc, 10, 19, 143/- 

Jocelin of Brakelonde, 173. 

John, king of England, 85 /., 116, 
131/., 154; character, 122/., 126/. 
struggle with Philip Augustus, 
136-39; loss of Normandy, 139/. 

John VIII, Pope, 237. 

John of Salisbury, 238. 

John the Scribe, 232. 

Jomvikings, 43/. 

Joppa, 130. 

Jumieges, 9, 171, 187. 

Jury, Anglo-Norman, 23, 109-13, 
142, 146. 

Justices, Anglo-Norman, 108; Sicil- 
ian, 227/. 

Kensington rune-stone, i. 

Kent, 166/. 

Knights' fees, 68, 78, 100, 145, 150, 

229, 231. 
Krak, 134. 

Lanfranc, 175-78. 

Laon, school of, 107, 177. 

Laplace, 4, 12. 

La Rochelle, 161. 

La Ronciere, Bourel de, quoted, 49. 

Lavisse, E., quoted, 143. 

Law, Norman, 11, 20, 23, 48/., 69, 
82, 108-13, 145 /., 224; Roman, 
137. 175-77, 179. 230 /., 236; 
canon, 137, 168, 175-77. 179. 230. 



INDEX 



255 



LeMans, 63, 88, 116 /., 125, 160, 
172. 

Leo IX, Pope, 203. 

Lessay, 187. 

Libraries, Norman, 177-81; south- 
Italian and Sicilian, 236-40, 242, 
246; papal, 240. 

Limerick, 37. 

Lindisfarne, 33. 

Lire, 178. 

Loire, relation to Plantagenet em- 
pire, 125, 128, 139/. 

Lombards, 175, 188, 192, 196-99, 
222 /., 238. 

London, 81, 162/. 

Lorraine, schools of, 107, 167.. 

Louis VII, king of France, 89, 118/., 
127. 

Louis X, king of France, 142. 

Luchaire, A., quoted, 70. 

Lugdunensis Secunda, 9, 21, 26. 

Luna, 33. 

Lusignan, 138. 

Luther, 18. 

Lyons, 125. 

Magna Graecia, 197, 238. 
Mahan, A. T., 30. 
Maine, 7, 10, 57, 62/, 85, 87, 136. 
Maitland, F. W., quoted, 48, no, 

113. 
Malta, 221. 
Manfred, 221, 240. 
Mantes, 58. 

Margam, Annals of, 139. 
Margat, 134. 
Marmoutier, 171. 
Matilda, abbess of Caen, 174. 
Matilda, empress, 85, 89, 163. 
Matilda, queen, 11, 61, 77, 186-88. 
Maupassant, 4, 8, 12. 
Mediterranean, Northmen in, 33; 

Normans in, 192 ff. 
Meles, 198/. 
Melfi, council of, 204. 
Messina, 129/., 208, 237; Straits of , 

207, 210, 232. 
Michelet, quoted, 11, 195. 



Mileto, 210. 

Millet, 4, 12. 

Monasteries, plundered by North- 
men, 35, 164; Norman, 81, 164/., 
171-75; their lands, 157/., 171 /.; 
schools, 175-77; libraries, 177-80; 
as centres of historical writing, 
180-83; relation to mediaeval 
epic, 185; their churches, 186-89; 
south-Italian, 176, 181, 225, 235- 

37- 

Monreale, 189, 241/. 

Mont-Saint-Michel, 10, 171; peas- 
ants, 158; property, 172; build- 
ings, 158, 173, 187, 189; library, 
173. 178- See Robert of Torigni. 

Monte Cassino, 178, 235-37. 

Monte Gargano, 198, 216. 

Montelius, O., quoted, 37. 

Montfort, 133. 

Montpellier, 177. 

Mortemer, 65. 

Mosaics, in Sicily, 241 ff. 

Nantes, 33. 

Naples, 197/., 222, 246. 

Napoleon, 76. 

Neel of Saint-Sauveur, 59. 

Neilos Doxopatrios, 238, 240. 

Nicsea, 52, 58, 195, 212. 

Niccola Pisano, 246. 

Nicholas II, Pope, 204. 

Nietzsche, 18, 55. 

Normandy, millenary of, 1-4, 25/.; 
compared with England, 5 /.; 
general features, 6-8; Upper and 
Lower, 8-1 1; inhabitants, 11-16; 
periods in its history, 17-22; 
general importance, 22-24; con- 
quered by Northmen, 26-48; how 
far Scandinavian, 48-51; under 
William the Conqueror, 59-61, 
66-72, 152 /. ; its archives, 66/.; 
relations with Anjou and Maine, 
61-63; with France, 63-65; with 
England, 73-83; centre of Plan- 
tagenet empire, 85-88; influence 
on England, 100-13; conquered 



256 



INDEX 



by Philip Augustus, 131-41; 
occupied by English in fifteenth 
century, 142-44; final union with 
France, 17, 19, 144; influence on 
France, 23, 141; dialect, 49, 145, 
224; life of lords, 149-57; of 
peasants, 157 /. ; of towns, 159- 
64; church, 71 /., 81, 164-71; 
monasteries, 171-75; their schools, 
175-77; libraries, 177-80; histori- 
ans, 12, 47, 180-84; vernacular 
literature, 184-86; architecture, 
186-89; the 'greater Normandy,' 
147, 182. 

Normans, characteristics, 1 1-16, 192, 
225, 247; conquest of England, 
52, 72-83, 223 /.; in southern 
Italy and Sicily, 2-4, 13 /., 16, 
22-24, 94, 150, 177, 181, 189, 192, 
198-21 1, 218-49; in Spain, 16, 
181, 192, 195; as pilgrims, 193-96, 
198/., 241; on the Crusades, 2, 
16,91, 127-31, 182, 184, 211-17; 
in Syria, 215/. See Normandy. 

Northmen, 12, 16 /.; invasion of 
Normandy, 26 ff.', causes and 
course of migrations, 29-31; in 
Frankish empire, 31-35; in Eng- 
land, 31-34; their culture and 
organization, 35-44; influence on 
Normandy, 48-51; as Crusaders, 
211. 

Noto, 209. 

Odo, bishop of Bayeux, 4, 57, 76, 

166/., 185/., 212. 
Ordericus Vitalis, his History, 154, 

174, 178, 180-83; quoted, 14, 176, 

180, 199. 
Orleans, schools of, 177. 
Ouche, 181. 

Palermo, Normans at, 189, 208, 
210/., 226, 231/., 238^. ; churches, 
230, 241 /. ; palace, 242-44. 

Palestine, 128, 130/., 134, 212-16. 

Papacy, Normandy and the, 22, 72, 
74, 79, 91, 136, 165, 168; relations 



with southern Normans, 192, 200, 

202-05, 210, 221, 238. 
Paris, 33 /., 76, 96, 136-38, 140; 

basin, 8, 125; Parlement of, 141/. 

university of, 177. 
Paris, Gaston, quoted, 185. 
Peasants, Norman, 157/- 
Peers, court of, 138/. 
Perche, 7. 

Peter the Hermit, 211. 
Petrarch, 246. 
Pevensey, 75. 
Philip Augustus, 19, 24, 95, 1 16, 

122; character, 126; struggle with 

Plantagenets, 127-29, 131-39; 

on the Third Crusade, 128-30; 

policy in Normandy, 142, 163. 
Philip d'Harcourt, bishop of Bay- 
eux, 167; his library, 178-80. 
Picardy, 7 /. 
Pilgrims, Normans as, 193-96, 198/., 

241. 
Pisa, 221, 232. 
Plantagenets, origin of, 61, 85, 89. 

See Henry II, Richard, John. 
PlatecB, 228. 
Poitiers, 88, 160. 

Poitou, 62, 75, 88, 90, 100, 128, 138/, 
Pontorson, 160. 

Poole, R. L., 114; quoted, 107.' 
Powicke, F. M., 147; quoted, 139, 

141. 153- 
Prentout, H., 24, 51, 147. 
Provence, 90. 

Quevilly, 163. 

Rabelais, 169. 

Racine, 11. 

Ragnar Lodbrok, 42. 

Ranulf, vicomte, 59. 

Raven, Lay of the, 38. 

Renaissance, of twelfth century, 
235-40, 245 /. 

Rhys, J., quoted, 49. 

Richard the Lion-Hearted, king, 85, 
95, 116, 153-55; character, 120- 
22, 126, 129/.; Crusade, 127-31, 



INDEX 



257 



215; struggle with Philip Augus- 
tus, 127-29, 131-36; death, 136. 

Richard of Aversa, 204. 

Richard, abbot of Preaux, 180. 

Richard, bishop of Bayeux, 177. 

Richard Fitz-Neal, author of Dia- 
logus, 104, 106. 

Richard the Good, duke, 52, 73, 195. 

Rigsmal, quoted, 38. 

Robert Crispin, 195. 

Robert Curthose, duke, 89, 96, 154, 
212/. 

Robert the Devil, 52. 

Robert Guiscard, 186, 200-08. 

Robert the Magnificent, 52 /., 65, 

195- 

Robert of Selby, 229. 

Robert of Torigni, 167, 172/., 178, 
180. 

Roger I, the Great Count, 200, 202, 
206-11, 225. 

Roger II, king of Sicily, 24, 206, 
210/., 219-22, 225-34, 238-49. 

Roger Borsa, duke of Apulia, 206/., 
213. 

Roger of Toeni, 195. 

Roland, Song of, 80, 184/., 193. 

Rollo, duke, 26-29, 42, 45/-; 184. 

Romanesque, Norman, 12, 186-89. 

Romans, Normandy under, 16, 20/., 
26; southern Italy under, 197. 

Rome, pilgrimages to, 194/.; Nor- 
mans at, 205. 

Rossano, 237. 

Rouen, i /., 9/., 21, 26, 46, 60, 73, 
88, 95, 117, 133/-, 136, 139. 142, 
144, 153, 172, 175, 178, 200; de- 
scribed, 9, 162 /.; churches, 2, 9, 
12, 162/., 169, 171, 187; Rtablisse- 
ments, 160-62; commerce, 160, 
162; libraries, 178. See Eudes Ri- 
gaud. 

Round, J. H., 77, 83, 114. 

Russia, 30. 

Saga, Burnt Njal, 11; of Harold 

Fairhair, 28; of St. Olaf, 46. 
Saint-Ceneri, 154. 



Saint-fivroul, 154, 171, 173, 176, 178, 
181-83, 195, 206. See Order icus. 

Saint-L6, 10. 

Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, Abbot Hai- 
mo, 170. 

Saint-Sauveur, convent, 169. 

Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte, 59. 

Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, 75. 

Saint- Wandrille, 9, 51, 171. 

St. Alexis, Life of, 184. 

St. Francis, quoted, 11. 

St, Gall, Monk of, quoted, 31. 

St. Ives, 175, 179. 

St. James, 193. 

St. Michael, 198. See Mont-Saint- 
Michel. 

Saintonge, 63. 

Saladin, 128. 

Salerno, 198-200, 205, 222, 232; 
university, 177, 238. 

Salutati, 246. 

Salzmann, L. F., quoted, 91 , 109, 118. 

Saracens, of Syria, 128-31, 192, 
212-14; of Sicily, 192, 196, 198/., 
208/., 223, 225; of Spain, 192, 195. 

Savigny, Congregation of, 171, 174. 

Savoy, 90. 

Schools, Norman, 175-77. 

Seine, 7-9; relation to Plantagenet 
empire, 125, 134/-. I39/- 

Seville, 33. 

Sheriff, Anglo-Norman, 103-05, 107. 

'Sicilian monarchy,' 210. 

Sicily, Normans in, 2-4, 13 /., 16, 
22-24, 75, 127, 177, 181, 189, 192, 
201 /., 204, 206-11; Norman 
kingdom of, 94, 105, 150, 210 /., 
216, 218-49. 

Simon, count, 210. 

Sorel, A., 4, 25; quoted, 7. 

Spain, 75, 181, 232; schools of, 177, 
180, 235 ; Normans in, 192, 195, 
211. 

Spatz, Wilhelm, 77. 

Springer, A., quoted, 239. 

Stamfordbridge, 75. 

State, beginnings of modern, 93, 
233/. 



258 



INDEX 



Stephen, king, 69, 89, 162, 167. 
Stubbs, William, 114; quoted, 92/., 

102, 121. 
Syracuse, 209. 

Tagliacozzo, 221. 

Taillefer, 79 /. 

Tancarville, 9, 155. 

Tancred, Crusader, 2, 213-16. 

Tancred of Lecce, king of Sicily, 220. 

Taormina, 209. 

Thibaud, count of Blois, 62. 

Thierry, abbot of Saint-£vroul, 195. 

Thomas Brown, 229. 

Tiglath-Pileser, 17/. 

Tinchebrai, 89. 

Touraine, 62, 88, 131, 136, 

Tournaments, 154-57, 189. 

Tours, 62, 88, 116, 125, 132, 160, 

177. 
Towns, Norman, 81, 159-64. 
Translators, Sicilian, 238-40, 246. 
Trouville, 4. 
Turks, 130/. 
Turold, bishop of Bayeux, 185. 

Urban II, Pope, 210/. 

Val-des-Dunes, 54, 59. 
Valognes, 10, 59/. 
Varaville, 54, 65. 
Vavassor, 150. 
Venice, 206, 232. 
Venosa, 206. 
Verneuil, 132, 160. 
Verson, Conte des vilains, 158. 
Vexin, 7, 125, 134. 
Vicomte, 69, 71, 103, 145. 
Victor III, Pope, 236. 
Vidal de la Blache, quoted, 7. 
Vikings, see Northmen. 



Vire, 10. 

Vitalis, founder of Savigny, 174. 

Voltaire, quoted, 86. 

Wace, 76, 184; quoted, 15. 
Warfare, mediaeval, 68 /., 77-79, 

133-35. 152-54- 

Westminster, 56, 95, 136. 

William the Conqueror, 10, 14, 19, 
163, 192; descent, 52; character, 
53-59. 83, 85, 188; early years, 
59 /.; relations with Anjou and 
Maine, 61-63; with France, 63- 
65; Normandy under, 66-72, 106, 
151 /. ; relations with the church, 
71 /., 165, 186-88; invasion of 
England, 73-75; battle of Hast- 
ings, 76-80; crowned king, 81; 
death, 58, 117. 

William Rufus, king of England, 89, 
212. 

William I, the Bad, king of Sicily, 
219, 221, 239/., 246. 

William II, the Good, king of Sicily, 
90, 219, 221, 230, 241. 

William III, king of Sicily, 220. 

William, duke of Apulia, 207, 210. 

William of Arques, 65. 

William of Conches, 177. 

William, prince, son of Henry I, 89. 

William of the Iron Arm, 200/. 

William of Jumieges, 180. 

William Longsword, duke, 46, 49. 

William of Malmesbury, quoted, 14. 

William Marshal, 154-57. 

Winchester, 56, 163. 

Witan, 74, 102. 

Writs, of Henry II, 98, in /.; of 
Sicilian kings, 227. 

Xerxes, size of his army, 78. 



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